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Division  j5SZG5"'^ 
Section    .W    )5 


^j>  William  gurnet  Wxi^lit 


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CITIES  OF  PAUL 


CITIES  OF  PAUL 


95eacon^  of  tl^e  ^a$t  refttnMeti 
for  t^t  ^re^ent 


BY 


WILLIAM  BURNET  WRIGHT 


NOV  8  1910 

llCkl  SEtf 


^^OOinu  <l^\\l^ 


AUTHOR    OF  "ANCIENT    CITIES,   FROM    THE    DAWN    TO 
THE   DAYLIGHT'* 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  COMPANY 

1905 


TO   THE   READER 

The  diseases  which  infected  all  and 
ruined  most  of  the  cities  mentioned  in 
this  book  are  not  strangers  among  us. 
Political  rings  more  insolent  and  more 
rapacious  than  that  which  plundered 
Tarsus  are  objects  familiar  to  most 
Americans.  The  greed  that  turned  into 
bandits  the  merchants  of  Corinth  has 
perverted  into  depredators  upon  the 
community  some,  at  least,  of  those  sol- 
diers without  uniforms,  whose  legitimate 
business  is  to  defend  it  from  hunger  and 
cold  and  nakedness.  Roman  contempt 
for  the  helpless  slave  has  reappeared  in 
that  brutal  indifference  to  the  public  wel- 
fare shown  alike  by  syndicates  of  capital 
and  combinations  of  labor ;  upper  and 
nether  millstones  grinding  the  rest  of  us 
between  them.  Many  trustees  of  enor- 
mous revenues  confided  to  their  charge 


viii  TO   THE   READER 

for  use  in  visiting  the  fatherless  and 
widows  in  their  affliction  do  not  appear 
to  have  kept  themselves  unspotted  from 
the  world.  The  taint  of  the  spirit  which 
degraded  Greek  athletics  is  said  to  have 
touched  even  our  universities.  These, 
and  other  facts  of  which  the  effects  are 
traced  in  these  pages,  appear,  when  illu- 
mined by  the  "  Beacons  of  the  Past," 
sufficiently  alarming. 

But  there  are  signs  of  better  things  to 
come.  A  general  insurrection  against  the 
usurped  authority  of  spoilsmen  and  the 
forces  of  organized  injustice  has  begun. 
It  is  gaining  strength.  Shifty  politicians 
who  have  led  the  people  by  the  tinkle 
of  party  names  as  bell-wethers  lead 
sheep  are  bewildered  by  a  new  spirit 
with  which  their  experience  has  not 
taught  them  how  to  cope.  In  many 
places  they  have  seen  themselves  dis- 
regarded, and  their  henchmen  outvoted 
in   favor  of  what   they  have    despised 


TO   THE   READER  ix 

as  "  Sunday-school  politics/'  The  men 
whose  popularity  to-day  eclipses  all  other 
reputations  are  those  who  have  shown 
the  disposition  and  ability  which  enabled 
Gideon  to  cast  down  the  altar  of  corrup- 
tion that  defiled  his  home,  and  to  break 
the  power  of  its  ministers. 

Young  men  —  in  whom  is  the  hope 
of  the  Republic  —  are  enlisting  with  un- 
selfish enthusiasm  and  in  constantly  in- 
creasing numbers  to  fight  the  good  fight. 
The  corrupters  are  hard  pressed.  The 
only  dangers  honest  men  need  fear  are 
those  which  arise  when  enthusiasm  grows 
weary  in  well  doing.  Against  that  temp- 
tation may  this  little  book  help  to  brace 
true  patriots  by  leading  them  in  hours 
of  discouragement  or  apparent  defeat  to 
ponder  the  experiences  of  that  preemi- 
nent reformer  who,  when  he  was  weak, 
was  strong  because  he  felt  that  he  could 
"  do  all  things  "  through  the  One  who 
strengthened  him. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PACK 

I.    Tarsus,  the  City  of  Paul's  Youth  i 

II.    Ephesus,  the  City  of  Superstitions  25 

III.  Philippi,  the  City  of  the  Suicides  58 

IV.  Thessalonica,  the  City  of  the  Sufferers  79 
V.    Old  Corinth,  the  City  of  the  Athletes  1 16 

VI.    New  Corinth,  the  City  of  the  Parvenus  1 40 

VII.    Colossae,  the  City  of  the  Slave  163 

VIII.    Ancyra,  the  City  of  the  Weathercocks  1 84 

IX.    Tyana,  the  Pagan  Bethlehem  208 


CITIES    OF    PAUL 

I 

TARSUS 

THE   CITY   OF   PAUL'S   YOUTH 

At  the  angle  formed  by  the  junction  of 
the  Syrian  coast-line  with  that  of  Asia 
Minor  the  land  is  dented  by  a  small 
thimble-shaped  inlet  tilting  east  of  north. 
Upon  its  shore  the  Phoenicians  built  a 
city,  after  which  it  was  called  "  the  Gulf 
of  Myriandros/*  The  Greeks  built  an- 
other, which  gave  it  the  name  of  Issus. 
A  third,  founded  by  Alexander  to  com- 
memorate his  conquest  of  Darius,  caused 
it  to  be  permanently  designated  "  the 
Gulf  of  Alexander." 

Even  Celtic  irreverence  would  scarcely 
venture  to  clip  the  august  name  at  which 
the  ancient  world  grew  pale  into  "Sandy 
the  Great."    But  "Iskander"  is  Turk- 


2  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

ish  for  "Alexander."  There  seems  no 
harm  in  docking  that.  "Alexander's 
Gulf"  has  therefore  come  down  to  us  in 
the  undignified  form  of  "  Scandaroon." 

Stretching  westward  from  this  inlet  for 
sixty  miles  and  extending  thirty  in  aver- 
age width,  inclosed  on  the  north  and 
west  by  rugged  mountains  and  on  the 
south  by  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  lies  the 
Cilician  plain.  Sterile  now,  it  was  once 
a  fertile  prairie.  No  other  equal  portion 
of  the  earth's  surface  has  been  rendered 
so  famous  by  the  battles  fought  upon  its 
breast  or  waged  upon  its  borders.  Near 
its  western  boundary  and  dominating  the 
entire  region  so  completely  that  we  may 
venture  to  call  the  whole  plain,  as  Jose- 
phus  says  "  it  was  called  of  old,"  "  Tar- 
sus," stood  the  City  of  PauFs  Youth. 

Three  hundred  and  thirty-two  years 
before  the  birth  of  Christ  Persia  was  the 
one  conspicuous  nation  in  the  world. 
For  weight  of  influence  she  bore  to  other 


TARSUS  3 

nations  much  the  same  relation  which 
at  present  England  bears  to  Egypt  or 
France  to  Morocco.  Those  living  at  that 
time  may  have  heard  rumors  of  military 
preparations  in  the  north  of  Greece. 
Compared  with  the  kinglet  who  was  mak- 
ing them,  the  Persian  monarch  appeared 
as  the  Russian  Czar,  before  his  prestige 
was  destroyed,  would  have  looked  beside 
the  King  of  Belgium.  Had  the  kinglet 
been  asked  whither  he  was  going,  the 
reply  might  have  been,  "  To  Tarsus,  for 
the  conquest  of  the  world !  " 

Had  you  lived  forty-one  years  before 
the  birth  of  Christ,  you  might  have  seen 
in  the  harbor  of  Egyptian  Alexandria  a 
vessel  loading  with  purple  and  gold  and 
pearls  and  perfumes.  Had  you  asked  its 
owner,  "Whither  shall  it  bear  you? "  the 
reply,  spoken  without  an  error  or  a  trace 
of  foreign  accent  in  either  one  of  seven 
languages,  and  spoken  in  a  voice  of 
such  alluring  sweetness  that  to  resist  its 


4  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

enchantment  seemed  beyond  the  power 
of  mortal  man,  might  have  been,  "  I  am 
going  to  Tarsus  to  conquer  the  world  !" 

A  little  later  the  Cilicians  saw  a  gilded 
barge  gliding  up  the  Cydnus,  propelled 
by  sails  of  purple  silk  and  oars  of  silver, 
which  kept  time  to  the  music  of  flutes. 
Upon  the  deck  beneath  a  canopy  of  cloth 
of  gold  reclined  the  Sorceress  of  the  Nile. 
Lovely  children  winged  as  cupids  clus- 
tered around  her  couch ;  fair  women 
adorned  as  graces  handled  the  tackling 
of  twisted  gold  and  silver  or  flung  upon 
the  air  the  costliest  of  Arabian  perfumes. 
At  Tarsus  the  enchantress  stepped  upon 
the  shore,  entered  the  Agora,  smiled 
upon  Mark  Antony,  then  the  virtual 
sovereign  of  the  earth,  and  led  him  a 
willing  captive  with  her  jeweled  hand. 

Had  you  lived  eleven  centuries  after 
the  birth  of  Christ,  you  would  have  heard 
Europe  clanging  with  arms.  The  ablest 
captain  of  his  age,  the  devoutest  of  the 


TARSUS  5 

German  Caesars  and  —  made  so  by  that, 
I  think  —  beyond  comparison  the  most 
commanding  of  them  all,  was  gather- 
ing into  his  army  the  ablest  warriors 
of  Christendom.  The  seventy  winters 
which  had  changed  his  luxuriant  beard 
from  red  to  white  had  purified  his  am- 
bitions and  increased  his  authority.  Ask 
him  whither  he  is  going,  and  he  will 
answer,  "  To  Tarsus,  to  conquer  the 
Orient  for  Christ !  "  Near  Tarsus  you 
might  have  seen  the  same  waters  which 
attacked  but  spared  the  life  of  Alexander 
and  floated  the  barge  of  Cleopatra  stab 
to  death  with  their  icy  chill  the  body  of 
Barbarossa. 

Had  you  been  alive  when  Christ  was 
born,  you  might  have  seen  a  little  boy 
playing  in  a  garden  at  Tarsus.  Had  you 
asked  him  whither  he  was  going,  he  could 
not  have  told  you,  but  we  can  reply, 
"He  was  going  from  Tarsus  to  conquer 
the  world ! " 


6  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

The  empire  Alexander  founded  at 
Tarsus  endured  ten  years.  The  sover- 
eignty Cleopatra  established  at  Tarsus 
lasted  a  few  months.  The  army  of 
Frederick  melted  away  when,  near  Tar- 
sus, its  leader  died.  But  for  nineteen 
centuries  the  victories  of  the  boy  from 
Tarsus  have  multiplied  with  the  years, 
and  you,  reader,  whatever  your  creed 
may  be,  are,  by  reason  of  the  civiliza- 
tion which  has  moulded  you,  a  captive 
of  his  bow  and  of  his  spear. 

A  visit  to  his  birthplace  and  early 
home  will  help  us  to  know  him,  because 
the  impressions  received  in  childhood 
are  the  chisels  of  character  and  make 
the  "  child  the  father  of  the  man."  Pass- 
ing many  facts  which  justified  the  Apos- 
tle's civic  pride  and  warranted  him  in 
calling  his  birthplace  "  no  mean  city,"  I 
ask  your  attention  to  those  only  which 
shed  light  upon  himself. 

I.  Paul  was  by  inheritance  a  Roman 


TARSUS  7 

citizen.  His  birth  at  Tarsus  fostered  in 
him  a  consciousness  of  that  dignity 
more  powerfully  than  birth  in  Rome 
itself  would  have  done.  For  Tarsus, 
though  in  culture  the  rival  of  Athens 
and  Alexandria,  in  commerce  a  metro- 
polis, and  in  importance  to  the  imperial 
navy  without  a  peer,  was  not  one  of 
those  cities  in  which  birth  carried  with 
it  the  rights  of  Roman  citizenship.  The 
few,  therefore,  in  Tarsus  who  possessed 
that  distinction  would  be  more  eminent 
among  their  neighbors  than  the  many 
in  Rome  who  possessed  it  would  be 
among  theirs,  for  the  same  reason  which 
makes  an  Englishman  more  conspicuous 
in  Calcutta  than  in  London.  Born  the 
equal  of  any  subject,  he  was  bred  where 
that  inheritance  was  peculiarly  signifi- 
cant. It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  he 
alone  of  the  Apostles  showed  at  all  times 
a  sense  of  high  worldly  station.  His 
aristocratic  consciousness  was  ingrained. 


8  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

In  boyhood  it  became  a  part  of  him- 
self. It  was  nourished  by  the  deference 
showed  everywhere  to  birth  and  breed- 
ing. It  never  left  him.  Witness  the 
calm  dignity  of  his  address  to  the  com- 
mander of  Antonia ;  the  quiet  author- 
ity with  which  he  called  to  account 
the  magistrates  of  Philippi  whom  other 
Jews  in  that  city  would  have  approached 
as  Shylock  approached  Bassanio ;  the 
unembarrassed  mien  with  which  he  re- 
buked Agrippa  and  instructed  Festus. 
Though  a  Roman  he  was  also  an  Israel- 
ite, and  an  Israelite  of  the  highest  class. 
That  he  counted  a  greater  honor  than 
even  Rome  could  confer.  We  shall  gain 
a  fairly  accurate  conception  of  his  feelings 
toward  Rome  on  the  one  hand  and  Jeru- 
salem on  the  other  by  thinking  of  Mon- 
tefiore  or  Disraeli,  than  whom  no  Jews 
were  prouder  of  their  Hebrew  lineage 
and  no  Englishmen  more  loyal  to  their 
British  birth.    This  twofold  inheritance 


TARSUS  9 

fitted  Paul  to  become  first  an  apostle, 
and  secondly  an  apostle  to  the  Gentiles. 
II.  Another  characteristic  of  St.  Paul 
was  his  keen  sense  of  civic  responsibility. 
He  alone  of  the  Apostles  —  if  we  may 
judge  from  their  writings  —  saw  in  the 
duties  of  citizenship  a  miniature  of  what 
Christians  owe  to  the  new  Jerusalem.  It 
is  difficult  to  imagine  John  or  James  or 
Peter  saying,  "  Our  citizenship  is  in 
heaven  ;  .  .  .  therefore,  my  brethren,  so 
[i.  e.  as  faithful  citizens]  stand  fast  in  the 
Lord."  But  for  some  reason  Paul  had 
learned  to  think  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
as  a  municipality  in  which  every  citizen 
was  faithful  to  his  civic  obligations.' 

'  Excepting  Hebrews  viii,  1 1 ,  a  quotation  from 
one  whose  civic  consciousness  was  exceedingly  alert, 
the  words  "citizen/*  "citizenship,"  and  their  cor- 
related verb  occur,  I  believe,  but  eight  times  in  the 
New  Testament;  five  times  in  expressions  attributed 
to  Paul,  twice  in  those  assigned  to  Luke,  PauPs 
companion,  and  perhaps  his  amanuensis,  and  once 
from  the  lips  of  a  Roman  officer. 


10  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

This  seems  to  be  the  reason.  During 
the  generation  preceding  his  birth  Tar- 
sus had  been  a  prey  to  thieves  like  those 
who  have  robbed  and,  what  is  worse, 
come  near  to  murdering  the  manhood  of 
certain  cities  in  the  United  States.  The 
"  Boss  "  of  the  putrid  ring  was  named 
Boethus.  Mark  Antony  promised  Tar- 
sus a  gymnasium,  —  probably  a  new  one 
more  magnificent  than  that  which  ap- 
pears to  have  been  already  standing  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  Cydnus,  —  and  ap- 
pointed this  well-known  scoundrel  super- 
intendent and  custodian  of  the  funds 
for  its  construction,  for  the  scamp  had 
flattered  the  general's  vanity  by  writing 
a  silly  poem  in  praise  of  the  victory  at 
Philippi.  When  Antony  reached  Tar- 
sus certain  civil  service  reformers  who 
were  not  afraid  to  speak  out  plainly  told 
him  how  plausible  and  slippery  a  knave 
Boethus  was.  Among  other  charges  they 
proved  that  he  had  secreted  for  his  own 


TARSUS  II 

pocket's  profit  even  the  gymnast's  oil. 
The  rascal  made  no  attempt  to  deny  the 
accusation.  His  sole  defense  was  this : 
"O  most  noble  Antony,  as  Homer  sung 
the  praises  of  Achilles  and  Agamemnon, 
so  have  I  sung  yours.  Ought  I  to  be 
brought  before  you  on  a  charge  like 
this  ? " 

The  reformers  replied,  "  Homer 
never  stole  oil,  and  you  have  !  *' 

To  those  who  are  not  politicians  the 
reply  may  appear  adequate.  But  it  did 
not  satisfy  the  triumvir.  Through  his 
vanity  the  prosecution  failed.  Boethus, 
made  more  brazen  by  its  failure,  stole 
with  increased  effrontery.  But  the  re- 
formers were  in  earnest.  They  were  of 
a  different  type  from  those  who  shriek 
themselves  hoarse  over  the  corruptions 
of  a  ring  and  vote  at  the  next  election 
to  continue  it  in  power.  They  perse- 
vered, and  the  Providence  who  always 
helps  such  men  helped  them. 


12  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

For  a  time  Boethus  treated  them  as 
Mr.  Tweed  treated  the  reformers  of 
New  York,  —  sneered,  "What  are  you 
going  to  do  about  it  ?  " 

But  the  Power  who,  even  to  energetic 
and  persistent  patriots,  sometimes  seems 
dead  but  never  is,  in  his  own  good  time 
abolished  Antony  and  put  in  his  place 
an  honest  emperor,  Augustus.  Now 
there  was  a  man  of  rare  ability  and  per- 
fect integrity,  a  native  of  Tarsus,  who 
had  been  the  tutor  of  Augustus,  and  had 
earned  that  sovereign's  entire  confidence. 
His  name  was  Athenodorus.  When  the 
cry  of  the  reformers  reached  Rome,  Au- 
gustus appointed  this  man  governor  of 
their  city.  Athenodorus  broke  up  the 
ring,  banished  Boethus  with  his  hench- 
men, pounded  the  "  organization  "  into 
powder,  and  governed  the  city  so  well 
that  upon  his  death  the  citizens  voted 
him  divine  honors,  and  established  an  an- 
nual festival  to  commemorate  his  virtues. 


TARSUS  13 

All  this  occurred  in  the  last  generation 
before  Paul,  and  Paul  was  born  before 
Athenodorus  died.  In  his  boyhood  the 
Apostle  must  have  witnessed  many  times, 
perhaps  taken  part  in,  the  celebration 
of  "Athenodorus*  Day,"  as  American 
boys  are  familiar  with  "  Washington's 
Birthday." 

The  mention  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Philippians  of  "  citizenship  in  heaven  " 
seems  to  me  a  window  through  which 
one  may  see  the  battle  between  Tarsus 
and  the  ring  that  disgraced  it.  Can  poli- 
ticians who  have  fattened  upon  corrup- 
tion in  modern  cities  be  described  more 
accurately  than  in  these  words  which  the 
memory  of  Boethus  may  well  have  sug- 
gested, "  For  many  walk,  of  whom  I 
have  told  you  often,  and  now  tell  you 
even  weeping,  that  they  are  enemies  of 
the  cross  of  Christ ;  whose  end  is  de- 
struction, whose  God  is  their  belly,  and 
whose  glory  is  their  shame,  who  mind 


14  CITIES    OF  PAUL 

earthly  things.  For  our  citizenship  is  in 
heaven,  from  whence  also  we  look  for  the 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ.'* 

III.  It  will  be  remembered  how  often 
St.  Paul  refers  to  the  Greek  games,  not 
only  in  writing  to  the  Corinthians,  where 
he  could  scarcely  avoid  doing  so,  but 
elsewhere.  Foot-races,  boxing,  hitting 
the  mark  —  words  from  these  sources 
fall  from  his  pen  as  if  they  belonged  to 
his  mother  tongue.  Dean  Howson  has 
counted  in  the  Pauline  Epistles  thirty  re- 
ferences to  Greek  athletic  sports,  and  adds 
that  he  has  not  exhausted  the  list.  This 
is  remarkable  for  two  reasons.  Paul  was 
a  Jew,  and  the  Jews  hated  these  naked 
sports  because  they  counted  them  ob- 
scene. He  was  a  Christian,  and  the  Chris- 
tians hated  them  because  they  thought 
them  cruel.  I  do  not  remember  any 
allusion  to  them  by  the  other  Apostles, 
though  John  and  Peter  must  have  been 
frequently  brought  in  contact  with  them. 


TARSUS  15 

What  led  Paul  to  make  so  much  of 
them  ?  Is  not  this  the  explanation  ? 

His  boyhood  was  spent  in  Tarsus. 
There  Greek  manners  prevailed.  No 
boy  could  have  breathed  the  atmosphere 
produced  by  the  Greek  passion  for  ath- 
letics without  yielding  in  some  degree 
to  its  influence.  The  gymnasium  where 
the  athletes  trained  and  where  the  young 
men  found  a  school  more  attractive  than 
their  famous  university  must  have  been 
for  the  youth  of  Tarsus  a  centre  of  in- 
terest. The  games  were  to  them  more 
than  football  and  boating  are  to  the 
universities  of  England  and  America. 
Could  the  boy  Paul  altogether  escape 
the  infection  ?  One  cannot  imagine  the 
Apostle  as  a  spectator  watching  the  con- 
tests at  Isthmia,  yet  he  shows  a  famili- 
arity with  the  minutest  details  of  their 
management  and  practice  which  could 
have  been  obtained  only  by  frequent 
observation.    This  is  not  surprising  if  in 


1 6  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

later  life  he  drew  his  illustrations  from 
the  recollections  of  his  boyhood,  as  all 
men  are  prone  to  do. 

Of  metaphors  and  illustrations  drawn 
from  Roman  soldiers  he  has  left  us  more 
than  twelve.  He  seems  to  have  liked 
military  men  and  to  have  felt  at  home 
with  them.  I  incline  to  think  this,  too, 
was  owing  to  his  birth  at  Tarsus.  The 
mountains  north  of  that  city  and  only 
twenty  miles  away  were  infested  by  bri- 
gands who  made  themselves  a  terror  to 
the  whole  Cilician  plain  until,  not  very 
long  before  the  Apostle's  birth,  they  were 
subdued  by  Cicero.  Though  I  do  not 
know  that  it  was  so,  it  seems  likely  that 
the  soldiers  sent  to  protect  the  city  from 
further  depredations  dwelt  at  Tarsus, 
and  that  the  citizens  they  protected 
learned  to  value  them  as  friends. 

IV.  Few  passages  in  the  Apostle's 
writings  have  been  so  much  misunder- 
stood as  those  in  which  he  appears  to 


TARSUS  17 

depreciate  intellect  and  learning.  "  The 
wisdom  of  this  age,"  he  wrote,  "  is  fool- 
ishness with  God."  Many  have  fancied 
that  here  and  in  similar  passages  he 
meant  to  disparage  the  spelling-book, 
and  all  that  it  stands  for.  The  most  un- 
lettered reader  ought  to  be  guarded  from 
that  delusion,  by  noticing  that  more 
than  any  other  New  Testament  writer 
St.  Paul  honors  the  human  intellect  by 
appeals  to  its  powers  of  reasoning  and 
capabilities  of  knowledge. 

When  he  wrote  "  the  wisdom  of  this 
age,"  he  was  thinking  of  such  instruction 
as  was  given  at  the  University  of  Tarsus, 
familiar  to  him  from  his  youth.  The  uni- 
versities of  Athens,  Alexandria,  and  Tar- 
sus were  then  all  and  more  than  all  that 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  to  England 
or  Harvard  and  Yale  to  America.  There 
is  no  indication  that  the  Apostle  was  fa- 
miliar with  the  great  Greek  thinkers.  In 
the  places  those  men  had  occupied  three 


1 8  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

centuries  before,  silly  professors  now 
rattled  like  dried  peas  in  a  pod.  They 
were  the  prototypes  of  those  mediaeval 
school-men  who  wasted  their  time  de- 
bating how  many  angels  could  stand 
upon  a  needle's  point.  The  problems 
they  discussed  were  for  the  most  part  as 
trivial  as  they  were  insoluble.  They  cared 
nothing  for  facts.  Their  boast  was  that 
they  could  take  any  side  of  any  question, 
and  by  tricks  of  logic  prove  that  it  was 
true.  They  were  called  "  Sophists  "  or 
in  English  "  wise  men."  It  was  to  their 
pseudo-wisdom  St.  Paul  referred.  With 
the  like  of  these  foolish  chatterers  he  was 
frequently  confronted  during  his  Gentile 
ministry.  At  Tarsus  he  had  learned  to 
understand  them.  They  had  filled  its  air 
with  their  silly  twaddle.  In  his  youth 
he  had  heard  their  harangues  contrasted 
with  the  teaching  of  Moses  and  the  Pro- 
phets. No  wonder  he  despised  them. 
Most  readers  would  probably  apprehend 


TARSUS  19 

his  meaning  if  his  language  were  para- 
phrased into,  "The  sophistry  of  this 
age  is  foolishness  with  God ; "  we  may 
add,  "  and  with  men  too." 

V.  In  an  age  when  the  Jews  had  nearly 
lost  all  practical  belief  in  a  future  life, 
and  most  of  the  Gentiles  had  lost  it 
altogether,  St.  Paul  wrote  those  words 
which  have  done  more  than  the  writings 
of  all  the  other  Apostles  to  bring  men 
under  the  powers  of  the  world  to  come. 
What  qualified  him  to  do  that  ? 

Several  circumstances.  Among  them 
not  the  least  was  his  birth  in  Tarsus. 
There  he  had  become  familiar  with  a  me- 
morial which  made  him  understand  what 
comes  to  communities  when  they  lose 
faith  in  a  future  life. 

A  few  miles  from  the  city  was  the  vil- 
lage of  Anchiale.  Tafel  traced  its  foun- 
dation to  the  Sybarite  king  Sardanapalus, 
the  Asshurbanipal  of  history.  Here  was 
a  tomb  supposed  to  be  that  of  the  As- 


20  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

Syrian  monarch.  Over  it  stood  a  colos- 
sal stone  statue  snapping  its  fingers 
toward  heaven,  and  bearing  in  Assyrian 
letters  the  inscription : 

"  Sardanapalus  the  son  of  Anacyn- 
daraxes  built  in  one  day  Anchiale  and 
Tarsus.  Eat,  drink,  and  be  merry.  No- 
thing else  is  worth  that  (a  finger  snap)  !  " 

We  need  search  no  farther  for  the 
origin  of  the  quotation  "  Let  us  eat  and 
drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die,"  or  for 
the  horror  with  which  the  Apostle  repu- 
diates that  creed.  In  Tarsus  he  had  seen 
whither  it  leads. 

VI.  iEgae  was  another  village  near 
Tarsus.  Here  was  a  famous  temple  of 
^sculapius,  doubtless,  like  others  of  its 
kind,  furnished  with  dexterous  devices 
for  counterfeiting  miracles.  I  have  no 
question  that  here  Paul  gained  the 
knowledge  of  jugglers'  tricks  which  en- 
abled him  at  a  glance  to  see  through  the 
pretensions  of  Elymas. 


TARSUS  21 

VII.  Two  other  important  facts  may 
now  be  mentioned. 

I  pass  the  circumstance  that  Tarsus 
was  the  emporium  for  the  Cilician  goat*s- 
hair  tents,  which  it  was  the  Apostle's 
trade  to  make,  with  this  remark.  One 
can  scarcely  doubt  that  the  loveliest  and 
most  comforting  illustration  regarding 
death  he  ever  used  occurred  to  him 
while  working  at  his  craft.  Was  it  not 
the  goat-skins  on  his  knees,  as  he  sewed 
them  together  and  reflected  upon  the 
use  for  which  his  hands  were  preparing 
them,  and  thought  how  soon  they  would 
wear  out,  that  moved  him  to  write, 
"  We  know  that  if  our  earthly  house  of 
this  tent  were  dissolved,  we  have  a  build- 
ing of  God,  an  house  not  made  with 
hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens." 

But  all  readers  of  the  New  Testament 
are  aware  of  St.  Paul's  familiarity  with 
commerce  and  ships. 

Tarsus  was  an  ancient  Chicago.    Her 


22  CITIES   OF    PAUL 

coins  represent  her  as  a  woman  seated 
among  bales  of  merchandise.  At  the 
mouth  of  the  Cydnus,  twelve  miles  away, 
was  the  largest  navy  yard  in  the  world. 
There,  too,  was  the  chief  rendezvous, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  Alexandria, 
of  the  Roman  mercantile  marine.  Here 
were  the  shipyards  to  which  galleys, 
men-of-war,  and  merchantmen  —  a  ma- 
jority of  which  had  been  built  of  the 
timber  from  forests  close  by  —  returned 
for  repairs.  The  place  was  a  Wool- 
wich, a  Liverpool,  and  one  is  tempted 
to  add  a  Greenwich  all  in  one.  It  was 
the  pride  of  Tarsus.  It  is  difficult  to 
doubt  that  here  in  his  boyhood  Paul 
gained  the  familiarity  with  maritime 
affairs  which  made  him  at  home  on  ship- 
board, and  became  conspicuous  on  the 
disastrous  voyage  to  Puteoli.  On  that 
voyage,  it  will  be  remembered,  his  judg- 
ment was  several  times  diametrically  op- 
posed to  that  of  professional  seamen. 


TARSUS  23 

and  was  in  every  instance  proved  to  be 
correct. 

It  seems  as  if  the  "  Divinity  that 
shapes  our  ends  "  had  decreed  that  a  man 
should  be  prepared  to  become  the  chief 
Apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  Therefore  his 
youth  must  be  spent  where  he  will  be- 
come familiar  with  all  their  ways. 

He  shall  stand  before  kings,  there- 
fore he  must  be  born  and  bred  in  a  so- 
cial sphere  that  is  not  easily  dazzled  by 
the  purple. 

He  shall  win  a  hearing  from  those 
who  care  for  nothing  but  amusement, 
therefore  his  boyhood  must  be  spent 
where  an  intimate  acquaintance  with 
their  favorite  amusements  will  enable 
him  to  clothe  his  message  in  illustrations 
that  cannot  fail  to  arrest  their  attention 
and  arouse  their  interest. 

He  shall  confound  the  rhetoricians 
who  have  persuaded  a  bewildered  age  to 
mistake    them    for   logicians,   therefore 


24  CITIES    OF    PAUL 

he  must  be  placed  where  a  perfect  under- 
standing of  their  sophistries  shall  come 
to  him  as  an  inheritance. 

He  shall  teach  two  years  at  Ephesus, 
therefore  he  must  understand  the  ways 
of  politicians. 

He  shall  spend  much  time  closeted  with 
soldiers,  therefore,  for  his  own  comfort, 
he  must  in  boyhood  learn  to  love  them. 

He  shall  make  many  a  voyage,  and  a 
knowledge  of  the  sea  is  for  him  impera- 
tive, therefore  he  must  be  cradled  among 
ships. 

He  must  understand  the  chief  indus- 
tries of  men,  therefore  in  childhood  he 
shall  play  among  bales  of  merchandise. 

He  shall  be  the  world's  most  potent 
preacher  of  the  resurrection,  therefore 
the  most  impressive  picture  on  his  primer 
shall  be  an  illustration  of  what  it  means 
to  lose  faith  in  immortality. 

For  all  these  reasons  he  must  be  born 
at  Tarsus. 


II 

EPHESUS 

THE   CITY  OF   SUPERSTITIONS 

Beautiful  for  situation  ;  the  metropolis 
and  chief  commercial  mart  of  the  pro- 
vince of  Asia;  preeminent  in  the  Orient 
for  the  splendor  of  her  buildings ;  wor- 
shiping in  a  temple  which  was  counted 
the  most  wonderful  of  the  world's  seven 
wonders,  and  to  which  troubled  souls 
from  Spain  to  India  made  pilgrimages 
to  atone  for  their  transgressions  or  sent 
for  amulets  to  charm  away  their  sorrow ; 
mother  of  the  church  which  inaugurated 
the  worship  of  the  Virgin  and  placed  the 
Madonnaof  Christianity  upon  the  throne 
which  for  centuries  the  Madonna  of  pa- 
gans had  occupied  ;  cradle  of  Parrhasius, 
residence  of  Zeuxis,  and  home  of  Apelles, 
the  greatest  painter  who  ever  lived ;  a 


26  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

school  of  art  which  had  no  equal  and  but 
one  superior  in  the  ancient  world  ;  birth- 
place of  two  of  the  most  commanding 
intellectual  conceptions  yet  given  to  man- 
kind, for  here  was  formulated  that  doc- 
trine of  "  The  Word  "  which  dominates 
Christian  creeds,  and  here  Heracleitus 
announced  the  truth  which,  rediscovered 
by  Charles  Darwin,  steers  the  science  of 
to-day ;  city  in  which  Antony,  "  drunk 
with  the  caresses  "  of  Cleopatra,  "  madly 
flung  a  world  away,"  and  in  which  Julian 
was  led  by  juggling  priests  to  waste  a 
noble  life  in  vain  attempts  to  restore  the 
ruined  shrines  of  Olympus ;  the  city 
where  Paul  wrote  that  letter  to  Corinth 
which  is  still  the  manual  of  Christian 
churches  ;  home  where  Luke,  "  the  be- 
loved physician,"  spent  his  declining 
years,  and  John  founded  the  first  semi- 
nary for  the  training  of  young  men  "  be- 
cause they  were  strong ; "  burial  place, 
almost  certainly,  of  that  disciple  "  whom 


EPHESUS  27 

Jesus  loved,"  as  also  of  Luke  and  Tim- 
othy and  probably  of  the  Virgin  Mary  ; 
memorable  for  giving  name  to  that 
Pauline  epistle  pronounced  by  Cole- 
ridge to  be  "  the  divinest  composition  of 
man;"  arena  where  the  great  Apostle 
"  fought  with  wild  beasts,"  and  where  in 
later  years  bishops  and  deacons  in  "the 
Robber  Council"  trampled  each  other 
in  the  name  of  Christ  with  a  malignity 
wild  beasts  are  incapable  of  feeling ;  — 
Ephesus,  called  by  the  whole  Ionic  race, 
as  London  was  called  by  Englishmen, 
"The  Good  Old  City"  and  named  by 
Pliny  "  The  Eye  of  Asia,"  well  deserves 
attention. 

More  than  to  its  material  advantages, 
great  as  they  were,  its  magnificence  was 
due  to  the  superstition  which  atmos- 
phered  its  site  with  the  same  kind  of 
reverence  that  Christians  feel  for  Beth- 
lehem. Ephesus  was  founded  and  fos- 
tered by  the  superstition  of  pagans.    It 


28  CITIES    OF  PAUL 

was  long  the  world^s  chief  nursery  of 
those  magical  arts  which  superstition 
engenders.  Its  heart,  the  temple  of 
Diana,  was  destroyed  and  the  temple's 
foundations  allowed  to  sink  out  of  hu- 
man sight  and  memory  by  the  supersti- 
tion of  Christians.  In  view  of  these 
facts,  it  seems  significant  that  whether 
the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  was  origi- 
nally addressed  to  those  whose  name  it 
bears  or  not,  it  may  be  described  cor- 
rectly as  the  inspired  antidote  to  super- 
stition. For  the  controlling  purpose  of 
the  epistle  is  to  show  the  futility  in 
religion  of  everything  but  affectionate 
obedience  to  God,  while  superstition 
consists  solely  in  reliance  upon  some- 
thing other  than  such  obedience.  It  is 
also  significant  that  superstition  is  the 
danger  against  which  the  letter  addressed 
to  the  church  at  Ephesus  and  preserved 
in  the  Apocalypse  warns  its  readers.  "  I 
know  thy  works,  .  .  .  but  I  have  this 


EPHESUS  29 

against  thee,  that  thou  didst  leave  thy 
first  love." 

To  continue  religious  activities  after 
the  love  that  inspired  them  has  departed, 
to  fast  three  times  a  week  only  to  ap- 
pease a  power  one  fears,  is  useless 
drudgery.  It  perverts  Christianity  into 
another  of  those  superstitions  it  was 
commissioned  to  destroy,  and  ends  by 
making  the  name  of  Christ  a  fetich  as 
impotent  as  a  silver  shrine  of  Diana. 

I.  Few  landmarks  remain  to  give  a 
correct  conception  of  the  ancient  city. 
The  streams  which  fertilized  her  fields 
have  shifted  their  channels.  Her  coast- 
line is  changed.  The  canal  which  made 
her  harbor  the  Liverpool  of  Asia  —  the 
province  of  that  name  —  has  long  been 
silted  up.  Of  the  famous  temple  outside 
her  walls  not  even  the  grave  is  marked. 
No  mound  swells  over  its  ruins  which 
are  hidden  beneath  twenty  feet  of  soil. 
When  Mr.  Wood  began  his  excavation. 


30  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  tobacco  reserved  for  the  sultan's  use, 
the  choicest  raised  in  his  dominions, 
grew  above  the  streets  where  the  people 
shouted  in  the  ears  of  Paul  "  Great  is 
Diana  of  the  Ephesians ! "  The  city 
where  John  taught  has  vanished.  Yet  it 
is  that  city  through  which  I  shall  try  to 
lead  you. 

Two  rather  steep  hills,  separated  by 
a  narrow  valley :  One  of  them,  a  ridge 
about  thirteen  hundred  feet  high,  ran 
nearly  east  and  west.  From  its  shape  and 
presumably  also  from  the  indentations 
which  probably  serrated  its  crest  before 
they  were  leveled  to  accommodate  a  gar- 
rison, it  was  named  "  Prion,"  that  is,  the 
"  Saw."  The  other  hill,  a  little  higher 
than  Prion  and  north  of  its  east  end,  was 
named  "  Coressus,"  or  "  Lady's  Hill." 

Tradition  said  that  once  when  Diana 
lost  her  way,  as  the  skillfulest  hunters 
sometimes  do,  she  ascended  this  ele- 
vation and  inquired,  "  Whose  place  is 


EPHESUS  31 

this  ? "  whereupon  some  sharp-witted 
Raleigh  replied,  "  Coressus,"  which 
meant,  as  nearly  as  one  can  get  it  into 
English,  "  Thine,  my  Lady !  "  Hence 
the  name. 

A  line  drawn  from  the  north  base  of 
Lady's  Hill  to  the  west  base  of  "  The 
Saw  "  would  form  the  hypothenuse  of  a 
right  triangle.'  In  the  space  inclosed  by 
it  was  the  great  basin  which  formed  the 
inner  harbor  of  the  city.  This  was  sup- 
plied by  water  from  the  sea,  which  is  now 
more  than  four  miles  distant,  by  a  canal, 
partly  natural,  partly  artificial,  and  easily 
navigable  for  the  largest  vessels    then 

'  These  are  Mr.  Wood*  s  identifications.  Others, 
as  Faulkner,  call  Mr.  Wood's  "Prion**  '<  Cores- 
sus,*'  and  his  "Coressus**  "Prion.**  In  spite  of 
Professor  Ramsay* s  great  authority,  I  believe  Mr. 
Wood's  identifications  to  be  correct,  because  they 
harmonize  best  with  known  facts.  The  Austrian  dis- 
coveries have  not  yet  been  published,  but  I  do  not 
see  how  they  can  affect  this  conclusion.  In  reading 
Faulkner  or  Professor  Ramsay  one  must  substitute 
"Prion**  for  Wood's  "Coressus**  and  vice  versa. 


32  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

afloat,  until  it  was  silted  up  through 
the  miscalculation  of  an  engineer  whose 
blunder  helped  to  ossify  this  main  artery 
of  commerce  and  so  to  make  the  city 
perish  of  gangrene. 

Around  the  east  front  of  this  basin, 
—  which  is  to-day  a  reedy  marsh,  —  the 
most  important  buildings  clustered.  The 
north  side  of  Mt.  Prion  and  the  west 
and  north  of  Coressus,  terraced  to  their 
tops,  were  occupied  by  residences. 

The  walls  circling  along  Mt.  Prion, 
a  little  south  of  its  crest  and  around  the 
east  and  north  base  of  Coressus,  have 
been  traced  from  a  point  on  the  south 
side  of  the  canal  west  of  the  Great  Basin 
to  a  point  on  the  north  side  of  the  basin. 
They  were  more  than  ten  feet  thick ; 
some  thirty-six  thousand  feet  in  extent; 
were  strengthened  at  intervals  of  a  hun- 
dred feet  by  towers  forty  feet  square,  with 
sally  ports  between  them,  and  inclosed 
about  a  thousand  acres. 


EPHESUS  33 

The  city  abounded  in  buildings  which 
for  strength  and  splendor  and  all  but 
size  equaled  any  and  surpassed  most  of 
those  in  Rome  itself.  The  population  ex- 
tended far  beyond  the  walls.  This  bird's- 
eye  view  will  enable  the  reader  to  locate 
the  few  places  to  which  I  shall  call  his 
attention. 

West  of  Lady's  Hill,  between  it  and 
the  basin,  was  the  Great  Forum,  and  close 
to  it  the  school  of  Tyrannus,  in  which 
Paul  taught.  Opening  toward  this  Fo- 
rum and  hewn  into  the  base  of  Lady's 
Hill,  was  the  great  theatre.  It  was  faced 
throughout  with  white  marble,  and  seated 
nearly  twenty-five  thousand.  It  was  used 
not  only  for  spectacular  displays  but  for 
religious  and  political  assemblies,  and 
seems  to  have  served  also  as  a  bourse  or 
meeting-place  for  the  Board  of  Trade. 
Municipal  decrees  were  inscribed  upon 
the  panels  of  its  enormous  stage.  Many 
of  these  the  spade  has  brought  to  light. 


34  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

Here  it  was  that  the  populace  rejected 
Paul  and  chose  Demetrius  for  pilot. 

The  east  side  of  Lady's  Hill  (Co- 
ressus)  appears  to  have  been  a  cemetery. 
Here,  nearly  opposite  the  great  theatre, 
but  somewhat  north  of  it  and  higher  on 
the  incline,  was  the  cave  in  which,  as  the 
legend  ran,  the  seven  sleepers  enjoyed 
their  long  repose.  It  was  a  cleft  in  the 
hill  artificially  wrought  —  it  is  not  known 
when — into  a  sort  of  temple.  Mark  this 
spot,  for  there  is  reason  to  suspect  that 
something  of  world-wide  interest,  to  be 
considered  presently,  occurred  there. 

At  its  east  end,  where  the  valley  be- 
tween the  Saw  and  Lady's  Hill  broadens 
toward  the  plain,  the  discovery  of  a  tomb, 
with  the  cross,  the  nimbus-crowned  hu- 
man figure,  and  the  symbolic  ox,  lends 
help  to  the  tradition  that  Luke  was 
buried  here.  From  the  great  theatre  an 
avenue  ran  eastward  between  the  Saw 
(Prion)    and    Lady's    Hill   (Coressus), 


EPHESUS  35 

curved  around  the  latter  to  the  north, 
and  passing  through  the  Magnesian  Gate 
continued  north-north westto  the  Temple 
of  Diana,  a  mile  beyond.  Until  the  last 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  that 
stupendous  structure  was  supposed  by 
modern  scholars  to  have  stood  within 
the  city  walls.  Mr.  Wood,  after  search- 
ing six  years  in  vain  for  its  location, 
discovered  in  the  great  theatre  an  in- 
scription which  showed  him  where  to 
look,  and  digging  twenty  feet  below  a 
field  of  barley  he  found  the  true  site. 

The  avenue  between  the  Magnesian 
Gate  and  the  temple  deserves  attention. 
The  gate  itself,  the  only  one  of  the  six 
superb  entrances  to  the  city  which  con- 
cerns us,  was  a  magnificent  structure.  It 
was  flanked  with  strong  towers,  and 
offered  two  broad  openings  for  vehi- 
cles, with  one  for  pedestrians  between 
them.  Above  these,  I  cannot  tell  pre- 
cisely where,  was  carved  in  high  relief 


36  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  figure  of  Nemesis,  with  wings  and 
wheels  to  indicate  that  she  was  equally 
at  home  on  earth  and  in  air.  Beneath, 
the  name  of  Vespasian  in  due  time  ap- 
peared. 

From  this  gate  two  chariot-ways,  sep- 
arated by  a  footway,  led  to  the  temple. 
The  footway  was  covered  by  a  decorated 
roof  resting  on  marble  pillars.  Both 
sides  of  the  avenue  were  lined  with 
statues  carved  by  Greek  sculptors,  tab- 
lets dedicated  to  renowned  Ephesians, 
and  tombs  in  which  it  seems  terra-cotta 
lamps  were  kept  burning  day  and  night. 
Conspicuous  among  these  was  the  co- 
lossal bronze  representing  Androclus, 
the  mythical  William  Tell  of  Ephesus, 
as  an  armed  warrior  holding,  I  believe  but 
am  not  sure,  a  torch  in  place  of  a  spear. 

The  avenue  seems  to  have  been  not 
only  a  thoroughfare,  but  to  have  had 
playgrounds  for  children,  and  it  touches 
a  tender  chord  to  find,  in  digging  to  its 


EPHESUS  37 

level,  marbles  such  as  our  boys  play  with 
and  hairpins  of  gold,  silver,  bone,  and 
cheap  metal,  dropped  perhaps  by  girls 
who  romped  here  two  thousand  years 
ago. 

The  avenue  terminated  at  the  great 
temple  built  on  the  site  of  that  which 
was  burned  on  the  night  of  Alexander's 
birth.  It  was  the  work  of  the  same  ar- 
chitect who  designed  Alexandria.  The , 
grandeur  of  his  conceptions  was  revealed, 
not  only  in  the  Pharos  of  that  city,  but 
even  more  impressively  in  his  request 
for  permission  to  hew  Mt.  Athos  into  a 
statue  of  Alexander  which  should  repre- 
sent him  holding  in  his  right  hand  a 
city  large  enough  for  ten  thousand  in- 
habitants and  in  his  left  a  lake  into 
which  all  the  streams  of  the  mountain 
should  be  gathered  and  poured  —  a 
perpetual  cataract  —  into  the  iEgean. 
There  is  hopeless  uncertainty  about  the 
artist's  name.    Strabo  calls  him  Cheiro- 


38  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

crates;  Plutarch  calls  him  Stasicrates ; 
another  author  calls  him  Deinocrates, 
and  still  another  Chersiphron.  No  one 
knows  which  name  to  accept.  It  is  sig- 
nificant of  many  things  that  if  asked 
who  destroyed  the  famous  temple  every 
schoolboy  would  reply,  "  Herostratos 
was  that  scamp/' '  though  no  scholar 
living  can  tell  who  rebuilt  it.  That,  too, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  because  the  in- 
cendiary fired  the  temple  to  make  his 
name  remembered  by  posterity,  the  city 
decreed  that  no  one  should  speak  his 
name  under  penalty  of  death. 

All  men  know  that  Cain  was  the  first 
murderer.  But  who  was  the  first  physi- 
cian ?    Let  him  who  can  reply. 

A  glance  at  the  temple  revealed  a  forest 
of  white  marble  columns  surrounded  by 
beautiful  gardens.  The  shafts,  each  sixty 
feet  in  height  and  hewn  from  a  single 
block,  stood  upon  drums  carved  in  high 
»  De  Quincey. 


EPHESUS  39 

relief  by  the  skillfulest  Greek  artists. 
The  columns  were  the  gifts  of  kings. 

The  heart  of  this  marble  forest  was 
the  Shrine  of  Diana.  In  that  shrine  stood 
the  image  of  the  goddess  in  pure  gold, 
and  beside  it,  shaped  into  the  semblance 
or  rather  the  suggestion  of  a  human 
figure,  the  meteor  stone  "which  fell  from 
heaven." 

But  these  were  not  the  only  treasures 
of  the  temple.  It  contained  statues  in 
gold  and  silver  of  Egyptian  Isis,  Phry- 
gian Cybele,  Syrian  Astarte,  and  the  su- 
preme female  deities  of  other  nations,  so 
that  worshipers  from  far  and  near,  find- 
ing within  its  precincts  the  objects  they 
adored,  were  made  to  feel  as  a  devout 
Roman  Catholic  feels  before  the  shrine 
of  the  Madonna.  The  temple  was  also 
rich  in  works  by  Praxiteles  and  other 
sculptors  inferior  to  him  alone.  It  con- 
tained a  gallery  of  paintings  by  Parrha- 
sius,  Zeuxis,  and  Apelles.    Here,  among 


40  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

several  other  portraits  of  Alexander  by 
the  last-named  artist,  hung  that  one  of 
which  the  story  ran  that  when  Alexan- 
der declared  it  was  not  like  him,  and 
Bucephalus  neighed  in  recognition  be- 
fore it,  the  painter  told  the  monarch  that 
his  horse  was  a  better  judge  of  art  than 
its  master.  This  was  the  picture  which 
moved  the  Ephesians  to  say,  "  There 
are  two  Alexanders,  one  invincible,  be- 
gotten by  Philip ;  the  other  inimitable, 
created  by  Apelles." 

The  temple  furnished  not  only  a 
Lady's  chapel  to  every  pagan  cult  and 
a  British  museum  of  art,  but  a  savings 
bank  for  the  poor,  a  bank  of  deposit 
and  discount  for  the  rich,  a  mont  de  pVefe 
or  pawn  shop  for  the  shiftless,  and  an 
asylum  sanctuary  for  criminals.  No  cul- 
prit could  be  legally  arrested  within  bow- 
shot of  its  bounds.  Here,  too,  was  the 
merchant's  principal  board  of  trade. 

Thus  every  department  of  Ephesian 


EPHESUS  41 

life  was  so  dominated  by  the  Temple  of 
Diana  that  we  may  say  the  atmosphere 
the  Ephesians  breathed  was  generated 
here.  This  fact  should  be  kept  in  mind 
when  we  read  the  nineteenth  chapter  of 
Acts. 

II.  Mr.  Wood  discovered  in  the  great 
theatre  an  inscription  which  informs  us 
that  when  the  men  who,  "  having  seized 
Gaius  and  Aristarchus,  Paul's  compan- 
ions," "  rushed  into  ''  that  place,  were 
boys,  some  of  them  may  have  dropped 
their  marbles  to  run  toward  that  same 
theatre  after  one  of  those  processions 
which  helped  prepare  the  way  for  the 
victory  of  the  peddler  over  the  Apostle. 
It  tells  of  a  wealthy  Roman  gentleman 
named  Salutarius  who  presented  a  num- 
ber of  gold  and  silver  images,  each  weigh- 
ing from  three  to  seven  pounds,  which 
the  city  voted  to  Artemis.  One  of  them 
represented  Diana  holding  two  stags ; 
another  figured  the   city  as  a   woman 


42  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

wearing  a  mural  crown.  The  munici- 
pality decreed  that  on  the  25th  of  May, 
the  birthday  of  the  goddess,  these  im- 
ages should  be  carried  from  the  tem- 
ple to  the  theatre  and  exhibited  there. 
This  decree,  the  name  of  the  donor,  the 
value  of  his  gift,  and  the  route  to  be 
taken  by  the  procession  Mr.  Wood  found 
inscribed  upon  an  inner  wall.  It  seems 
probable  that  the  ceremony  formed  an 
aeolian  attachment  to  that  held  every  year 
on  the  same  date  in  honor  of  Diana. 
The  only  reason  for  supposing  it  was 
not  is  that  the  images  were  to  enter  the 
city  by  the  Magnesian  and  leave  it  by 
the  Coressian  ;  and  the  latter,  it  has  been 
held,  intended  solely  for  pedestrians, 
must  have  been  too  narrow  for  the  pas- 
sage of  chariots  and  cars.  This  objection, 
however,  disappears  before  the  reported 
discovery  by  the  Austrian  explorers  of  a 
broad  street  leading  through  it  from  the 
basin  to  the  temple. 


EPHESUS  43 

If  the  images  formed  a  part  of  the 
annual  procession,  its  general  appearance 
could  scarcely  have  been  widely  different 
from  the  following. 

First  comes  a  band  of  damsels  clad 
in  fawn  skins,  scattering  flowers  as  they 
pass.  Then  priests  in  leopard  skins, 
some  preceding,  some  following  a  plat- 
form car  drawn  by  white  mules.  On  this 
the  gifts  of  Salutarius  are  displayed. 
Next  the  car  of  the  goddess,  drawn  by 
stags,  and  bearing,  not  the  meteorite 
stone,  but  a  golden  image  representing  a 
woman  with  many  breasts,  gleaming  with 
jewels,  supported  between  two  golden 
sceptres  fastened  to  the  floor  of  the  car. 
Then  follow  musicians.  After  them  a 
woman  dressed  as  the  divine  huntress 
with  bow  and  quiver.  Then  troops  of 
animals,  dogs,  deer,  lions,  specimens  led 
in  leash  of  most  beasts  that  hunt  or  are 
hunted. 

At   the    Magnesian    Gate    the    pro- 


44  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

cession  is  met  by  young  men  of  the 
city  in  holiday  attire,  and  by  them  con- 
ducted along  the  south  side  of  Lady's 
Hill  to  the  theatre  where  the  gifts  of 
Salutarius  are  placed  for  inspection.  The 
terraces  on  both  sides  of  the  street  are 
crowded  with  spectators,  any  of  whom 
would  be  greatly  if  not  dangerously  con- 
spicuous unless  he  wore  pendant  from 
his  neck  or  fastened  on  his  bosom  a  gold 
or  silver  emblem,  a  tiny  temple,  shrine, 
or  image,  to  mark  him*  as  one  of  those 
ready  to  shout  "  Great  is  Diana  of  the 
Ephesians  !  '*  These  trinkets  were  the 
"  shrines  "  for  which  Demetrius  bulled 
the  market  when  it  had  been  seriously 
depressed  by  the  preaching  of  Paul. 

Twenty-five  thousand  persons  crowd 
the  theatre  to  hear  speeches  praising  the 
generosity  of  Salutarius.  When  these 
have  been  spoken,  the  crowd  rushes  to 
the  temple  to  see  the  most  accomplished 
female  dancers  in  the  world — the  Elsslers 


EPHESUS  45 

and  Taglionis  of  their  day  —  perform, 
with  clanging  shields  and  flashing  swords, 
the  far-famed  dance  of  the  Amazons, 
which  can  be  witnessed  nowhere  else. 
It  seems  likely  that  Demetrius  selected 
for  his  attack  on  the  Apostle  some  such 
occasion  as  this,  as  Cyril  selected  Lent 
for  the  assassination  of  Hypatia  and 
Catherine  a  saint's  day  for  the  murder 
of  Coligni.  Demetrius  was  probably  a 
large  employer  of  labor.  His  was  pre- 
sumably the  chief  manufactory  of  the 
images  worn  by  the  people.  His  trade  had 
been  damaged  already,  and  was  threat- 
ened with  ruin  by  the  new  religion. 
Workingmen  were  alarmed  by  the  fear 
of  losing  employment.  Priests,  the  good 
ones,  were  excited  by  zeal  for  the  honor 
of  their  deity  ;  the  bad  ones  by  anxiety 
for  their  trade.  Unless  this  proclaimer 
of  an  "  unknown  God  "  "  who  dwelt  not 
in  temples,  neither  was  worshiped  with 
men's  hands,"  can  be  suppressed,  their 


46  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

pockets  will  be  depleted  and  their  influ- 
ence curtailed. 

Thus  avarice  joined  with  hunger  and 
superstition  to  prepare  powder  for  the 
explosion,  and  a  festival  may  have  sup- 
plied the  spark.  Some  one  whispers  that 
there  is  an  atheist  about  who  has  per- 
suaded many  to  blaspheme  by  denying 
the  deity  of  Diana.  Another  adds  that 
through  his  influence  trade  has  fallen  oflF 
and  workingmen  are  being  discharged. 
Another  adds  that  the  atheist  is  a  miser- 
able Jew  whom  even  his  despised  coun- 
trymen have  driven  as  a  miscreant  from 
Jerusalem.  The  whispers  multiply  as 
whispers  do.  They  grow  into  outcries. 
"  Where  is  the  atheist  ?  "  "  Bring  him 
into  the  theatre  !  " 

The  mob,  now  furious,  rushes  thither. 
They  will  drag  Paul,  if  they  can  find  him, 
into  the  place  where  all  can  see  him,  sure 
that  he  will  not  leave  it  alive.  "  Some 
shout  one  thing,  some  another,"  snarl- 


EPHESUS  .  47 

ing,  howling,  and  foaming  in  a  way  the 
memory  of  which  may  have  suggested 
the  words,  "  I  fought  with  wild  beasts  at 
Ephesus  ! " 

III.  On  the  east  side  of  Lady's  Hill, 
in  an  artificially  enlarged  cleft,  are  the 
signs  of  what  seems  to  have  been  a 
temple,  and  in  later  times  a  church.  It 
was  the  cave  I  have  asked  the  reader  to 
mark.  Here,  it  was  fabled,  seven  young 
men,  brothers  and  Christians,  con- 
demned to  death  during  the  persecution 
under  Diocletian,  fled  for  concealment. 
Miraculously  protected,  they  fell  asleep 
and  slept  two  hundred  years.  On  awak- 
ening they  came  forth  and  found  the 
city  converted  to  Christ.  Thereupon 
after  telling  their  story  with  great  joy, 
they  yielded  up  the  ghost,  and  to  com- 
memorate the  wonder  the  cave  was 
wrought  into  a  Christian  church. 

But  something  occurred  at  Ephesus 
—  and  though  no  one,  I  believe,  has 


48  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

ventured  to  say  precisely  where,  there 
are  reasons  for  thinking  it  may  have 
been  here  —  more  important  than  the 
fiction  of  the  Seven  Sleepers. 

The  "  cave  "  was  sacred  to  Arcadian 
Artemis. 

While  Julian,  still  a  youth,  was  waver- 
ing between  the  claims  of  the  religion  in 
which  he  had  been  bred  and  those  of 
the  Greek  cult  it  had  superseded,  he  left 
Athens  for  a  surreptitious  conference  with 
Maximus  at  Ephesus.  Maximus  was  an 
aged  philosopher  celebrated  for  wisdom 
and  also  for  powers  deemed  supernatural. 
He  was  said  to  possess  a  voice  of  such 
exquisite  sweetness  that  no  one  could 
hear  him  speak  without  being  fascinated, 
as  Ulysses  had  been  by  the  songs  of  the 
sirens.  Many  thought  his  words  oracular. 
There  are  reasons  which  make  it  seem 
probable  to  me  that  it  was  to  this  "cave," 
furnished  with  all  appliances  of  the 
juggler's  art,  that  the  old  man  brought 


EPHESUS  49 

the  young  Julian.  Spectres  of  fire  ap- 
peared in  the  darkness.  They  moved 
around  him.  Mysterious  sounds  reached 
his  ears.  A  voice  declared,  "The  gods 
have  given  you  the  soul  of  Alexander.'* 

Trembling  with  awe,  the  future  em- 
peror made  the  sign  of  the  Cross.  In- 
stantly the  spectres  vanished  and  the 
sounds  ceased.  A  moment  followed  of 
darkness  and  silence.  Then  the  same 
voice  was  heard  from  afar  saying,  "  That 
sign  is  impotent,  but  it  marks  a  blas- 
phemer to  whom  the  gods  will  not 
speak." 

Then  Julian  fell  upon  his  face  and 
swore  a  great  oath  that  he  would  replace 
the  old  gods  upon  their  thrones  or  per- 
ish in  the  attempt.  Faithfully  he  kept 
the  oath,  and  it  is  to  his  lasting  honor 
that  he  strove  to  accomplish  it  not  by 
the  arguments  of  force,  but  by  the  per- 
suasions of  reason.  When  at  last  he  was 
compelled  to  utter  the  confession  which 


50  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

Swinburne  has  paraphrased  in  the  mem- 
orable lines,  — 

«'  Thou  hast  conquered,  O  pale  Galilean  ! 
The  world  has  grown  grey  with  thy  breath. 
We  have  drunken  of  things  Lethean, 
And  fed  on  the  fulness  of  death,'*  — 

no  man  could  truthfully  say  that  he 
had  shed  blood  for  the  furtherance  of 
his  faith.  The  fiction  of  the  Seven  Sleep- 
ers started  those  fairy  tales  of  the 
"  Sleeping  Beauty  "  and  the  like  which 
have  cultivated  the  imaginations  and 
sweetened  the  tempers  of  our  children  ; 
but  the  waking  vision  of  Julian  in  the 
cave  —  it  may  be  where  the  fabled  sleep- 
ers lay  —  helped  to  change  for  half  a 
generation  the  official  religion  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire,  to  pervert  into  an  enemy 
of  Christianity  one  of  the  least  unchrist- 
like  of  all  the  Caesars,  and  went  far  to 
confirm  in  him  those  misconceptions  of 
duty  which  enabled  him  to  count  as  a 
virtue  his  usurpation  of  imperial  power. 


EPHESUS  51 

IV.  But  the  saddest  form  of  super- 
stition that  ever  raged  in  Ephesus  was 
manifested  there  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
449.  I  do  not  refer  to  the  worship  of  the 
Virgin  Mother,  which  originated  from 
the  decree  of  a  council  held  in  that  city 
a  few  years  earlier.  On  the  contrary,  of 
all  the  dogmas  which  I  disbelieve,  that 
one  which  for  centuries  led  men  to  see 
in  Mary  those  divine  qualities  which 
theologians  had  made  it  impossible  for 
them  to  see  in  the  phantom  they  had 
substituted  for  her  son,  seems  to  me  the 
sweetest,  the  tenderest,  and  the  most 
beneficent.  At  a  time  when  to  most 
Christians  the  word  "  Christ  "  signified 
incarnate  cruelty,  the  spirit  of  Christ 
under  the  name  of  his  Mother  softened 
the  sorrows,  kindled  the  aspirations,  and 
when  it  could  not  extirpate  restrained 
the  wicked  passions  of  untold  millions. 
Far  be  it  from  me  to  brand  as  a  pernicious 
superstition    the    faith    which    enabled 


52  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

Jacopone  to  chant  the  Stabat  Mater  in 
the  ears  of  an  age  which  was  soon  to  see, 
on  every  highway  of  Europe,  flagellants 
frenzied  by  fear  and  dying  in  despair 
from  the  self-inflicted  scourgings  by 
which  they  strove  to  appease  the  wrath 
of  the  inexorable  phantom  they  had 
been  taught  to  call  "  Christ." 

The  superstition  which  clothed  Ephe- 
sus  with  infamy  was  the  same  which  has 
done  more  than  all  others  to  delay  the 
coming  of  the  Kingdom.  It  was  the 
superstition  which  sired  the  Inquisition, 
burned  Huss,  kindled  the  fires  of  Smith- 
field,  and  painted  Europe  many  times 
with  blood.  It  murdered  Bruno  and 
tried  to  murder  Luther,  gathered  the 
fagots  for  Servetus,  and  cursed  humanity 
with  Philip  the  Second.  It  was  the  su- 
perstition which  the  prophets  of  Israel 
fought  without  ceasing,  which  Paul's 
energies  were  strained  to  destroy,  against 
which  Christ  was   never  through  with 


EPHESUS  53 

warning  his  disciples ;  the  superstition 
that  creeds  are  more  important  than  con- 
duct, and  that  to  love  God  with  all  the 
heart  and  one's  neighbor  as  one's  self, 
is  wholly  insufficient  for  the  salvation  of 
the  soul  that  holds  erroneous  opinions. 
In  449  A.  D.,  the  churches  from  Rome  to 
Antioch  and  from  Alexandria  to  Con- 
stantinople were  fiercely  excited  over  a 
point  of  theological  dogma.  What  that 
dogma  meant  no  mortal  understood  then 
and  no  mortal  understands  now.  There 
were  certain  party  catchwords  concerning 
the  two  natures  of  Christ.  The  words 
had  been  emptied  of  their  meaning,  if 
indeed  they  ever  had  any  meaning,  as 
completely  as  the  word  "  Tory "  or 
"  Kingsman  "  has  been  emptied  of  the 
meaning  it  carried  in  America  to  the  sol- 
diers of  Washington.  The  words  stood 
for  no  clear  conception,  but  for  a  vacuum 
of  conception.  They  became  mere  party 
war-cries. 


54  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

An  Ecclesiastical  Council,  summoned 
by  the  emperor,  convened  at  Ephesus. 
It  was  called  to  determine  whether  Eu- 
tyches,  a  teacher  at  Constantinople,  used 
the  orthodox  war-cry.  Dioscurus,  Bishop 
of  Alexandria,  declared  that  he  did.  Fla- 
vian, Bishop  of  Constantinople,  declared 
that  he  did  not.  One  hundred  and  thirty- 
five,  some  say  one  hundred  and  fifty, 
bishops  with  their  delegates  assembled 
to  try  the  case.  Dioscurus,  made  presi- 
dent of  the  council,  not  by  the  vote  of 
his  peers,  but  by  imperial  decree,  con- 
trolled an  overwhelming  majority  of  the 
members.  The  council  met  surrounded 
by  soldiers  who  had  been  placed  under 
his  orders.  Blank  papers  were  given  to 
the  members  of  the  council.  These 
they  were  compelled  at  sword's  edge  to 
sign.  Over  the  signatures  thus  obtained 
the  opinion  of  the  majority  was  written, 
and  so  the  council  speedily  reached  a 
"  unanimous  "  decision.    It  was  charged 


EPHESUS  55 

at  the  opening  of  proceedings  that  one 
of  the  bishops  in  conference  had  com- 
mitted an  atrocious  crime,  for  which  he 
ought  to  be  disqualified.  Dioscurus,  the 
president,  replied,  "  If  you  have  a  com- 
plaint against  his  orthodoxy  we  will  re- 
ceive it,  but  we  are  not  here  to  pass 
judgment  upon  unchastity."  Before  the 
"  unanimous  "  verdict  was  declared,  the 
majority  filled  the  air  (it  was  in  the  Church 
of  Madonna  Mary)  with  loud  and  angry 
denunciations  of  the  minority.  When 
the  verdict  had  been  given,  the  Bishop 
of  Alexandria,  backed  by  a  retinue  of 
soldiers  and  a  rabble  of  monks,  shouting 
"  He  who  would  divide  the  nature  of 
Christ  should  himself  be  cut  in  two ; 
kill  them  !  kill  them  ! "  knocked  down 
his  brother  the  Bishop  of  Constantinople, 
trampled  the  breath  out  of  his  body,  and 
mangled  it  so  that  in  three  days  he  died 
of  his  wounds.  The  delegate  from  Rome, 
who  represented  the  great  Leo,  saved 


56  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

his  life  by  flight,  and  the  rest  of  the 
minority  —  some  by  lying,  some  by  hid- 
ing in  holes  and  cellars  —  escaped  as  best 
they  could. 

All  this  occurred  in  the  city  to  which 
every  member  of  the  council  believed 
that  Paul  had  written,  "  I  therefore,  the 
prisoner  in  the  Lord,  beseech  you  to 
walk  worthily  of  the  calling  wherewith  ye 
were  called,  with  all  lowliness  and  meek- 
ness, with  longsuffering,  forbearing  one 
another  in  love."  All  this  was  done  in 
the  city  where  John  had  so  often  re- 
peated the  Master's  words,  "A  new 
commandment  I  give  unto  you,  that  ye 
love  one  another."  All  this  was  done  in 
the  city  where,  according  to  a  tradition 
which  every  one  of  the  council  ought  to 
have  known,  and  most  of  them  prob- 
ably did  know,  that  same  disciple  had 
preached  until,  grown  too  feeble  to  walk, 
he  was  carried  into  his  pulpit,  and  there 
repeated  day  after  day  the  same  words, 


EPHESUS  57 

adding  no  comment,  "Little  children, 
love  one  another,"  till  wearied  by  the 
iteration  his  hearers  asked  him  to  say- 
something  more,  and  heard  him  reply, 
"  No  1  no  !  Little  children,  there  is 
nothing  more ! " 


Ill 

PHILIPPI 

THE   CITY    OF   THE    SUICIDES 
** .   .   .  Thou  shalt  meet  me  at  Philippi." 

So,  Shakespeare  tells  us,  the  spirit  of 
Julius  Caesar  summoned  Brutus  from 
Asia  to  Macedonia. 

The  scene  is  not  a  creation  of  the 
poet.  To  the  minute  details,  —  of  place, 
tent  near  Sardis  ;  of  time,  past  mid- 
night ;  the  solitude ;  the  sleeplessness ; 
the  futile  attempt  to  read ;  the  fading 
light,  "  how  ill  this  taper  burns,"  —  it 
is  copied  from  Plutarch. 

There  is  no  valid  reason  for  doubt- 
ing that  amid  precisely  these  circum- 
stances Brutus  saw  or  thought  he  saw 
an  apparition  and  heard  or  thought  he 
heard  it  say,  "  I  am  thy  evil  genius.  I 
will  meet  thee  at  Philippi."    There  is  no 


PHILIPPI  59 

doubt  whatever  that  he  went  to  Philippi, 
and  that  there,  by  his  defeat  and  death, 
changed  the  history  of  the  world. 

Paul  also,  alone,  in  Asia,  at  night, 
saw  a  vision.  A  man  of  Macedonia  ap- 
peared and  said  to  him,  "  Come  over 
into  Macedonia  and  help  us." 

The  Apostle  obeyed  the  summons, 
and  at  Philippi  inaugurated  a  change  still 
more  important.  But  Philippi  claims 
attention  not  only  because  there  the 
"last  of  the  Romans"  ended  and  the 
"  first  of  the  Apostles  "  began  their  work 
in  Europe  ;  at  Philippi,  it  may  be  said, 
the  civilized  world  was  conquered  three 
times  and  in  three  different  ways. 

Without  the  phalanx  Alexander  could 
not  have  overcome  the  Orient.  But  it 
was  the  thousand  talents  taken  yearly 
by  his  father  from  the  mines  of  Philippi 
which  created  the  phalanx. 

At  Philippi  forty-two  years  before 
Christ  the  battle  was  fought  which  de- 


6o  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

cided  that  the  Roman  republic  should 
be  an  empire.  At  Philippi  it  seems 
probable  that  Paul  planted  Christianity 
in  Europe.  For  these  reasons  it  seems 
scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  at 
Philippi  deeds  were  done  which  have 
three  times  conquered  the  civilized  world, 
—  once  by  money,  once  by  arms,  and 
once  by  moral  force. 

Only  ruins,  among  which  are  traces 
of  a  theatre,  cut  in  the  solid  rock  of 
the  hillside,  and  an  ancient  sarcophagus, 
which  the  peasants  still  believe  to  be  the 
crib  of  Bucephalus,  mark  the  site  of 
the  celebrated  city,  but  it  is  possible,  by 
combining  hints  from  widely  separated 
sources,  to  form  a  fairly  accurate  picture 
of  the  place. 

It  was  as  purely  as  San  Francisco  a 
creation  of  gold  mines. 

A  certain  mountain  in  Thrace  was 
believed  to  be  the  favorite  resort  of 
Dionysus,  the    Greek   Bacchus.    Him, 


PHILIPPI  6 1 

the  Thraclan  mountaineers  chiefly  wor- 
shiped. The  mountain  was  also  rich 
in  gold,  which  most  men  chiefly  worship. 
At  the  foot  of  the  mountain  was  a  min- 
ing camp,  —  one  can  scarcely  say  "a 
settlement,"  —  named,  from  the  abun- 
dance of  waters  near  it,  "  The  Springs." 

Philip,  a  more  far-sighted  statesman 
than  his  more  celebrated  son,  discerned 
the  capabilities  of  the  location.  First  he 
renamed  it  after  himself.  There  were  sev- 
eral springs,  and  he  meant  to  claim  them 
all.  Each  of  them  was  therefore  named 
"  Philip,"  and  the  whole  of  them  "  The 
Philips."  Thus  the  city  got  the  plural 
name  Philippi,  not  because  there  were 
many  Philips,  but  many  streams  bearing 
the  same  man's  name. 

Next,  in  order  to  secure  an  adequate 
supply  of  laborers,  he  declared  the  place, 
because  it  was  near  the  sacred  mountain, 
a  sanctuary.  This  soon  made  It  a  sort 
of  Botany  Bay,  a  refuge  for  criminals 


62  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

and  fugitive  slaves  from  all  parts  of 
Greece,  for  here  the  laws  they  had  broken 
could  not  claim  them. 

To  keep  such  refuse  at  work,  to  pre- 
vent their  cutting  each  other's  throats  and 
decamping  with  treasure,  no  less  than  to 
protect  their  operations  from  the  fierce 
mountaineers,  soldiers  and  fortifications 
were  requisite.  The  astute  monarch  pro- 
vided both,  and  so  arose  Philippi,  the 
treasury  from  which  the  gold  that  en- 
abled Alexander  to  conquer  the  world 
was  drawn. 

We  will  visit  the  place  in  the  year 
B.  c.  42. 

Sailing  westward  across  the  2EgeB,n 
Sea  from  near  the  site  of  Homer*s  Troy, 
we  land  at  Neapolis,  the  port  of  Phil- 
ippi. Here  close  to  the  water  runs  the 
low  range  called,  because  it  joins  two 
lofty  elevations,  Symbalon,  or  the  Link. 
It  rises  steeply.  A  mile  and  a  half  of 
the  Egnation  Road  brings  us  to  its  sum- 


PHILIPPI  63 

mit.  Sixteen  hundred  feet  below  us  on 
the  west  lies  a  fertile  plain  rimmed  with 
mountains.  Upon  it,  nine  miles  to  the 
northwest,  stood  the  city.  The  Egna- 
tion  Road,  dividing  it  into  unequal  parts, 
formed  its  main  street.  The  north  and 
smaller  section,  triangular  in  shape,  was 
built  upon  a  rounded  hill  of  solid  rock 
and  called  "  High  Town."  The  south 
and  larger  section  formed  a  square  drawn 
on  the  base  of  the  triangle,  was  on  level 
ground,  and  was  called  "  Low  Town." 

In  High  Town  stood  the  Citadel.  It 
was  of  prodigious  strength,  and  was  prob- 
ably the  prison  from  which  an  earth- 
quake delivered  Paul.  Both  sections 
were  inclosed  by  two  concentric  walls 
strengthened  by  towers  and  ramparts, 
and  leaving  between  them  a  broad  space 
filled  with  gardens  and  statues.  Enter- 
ing the  main  street  from  the  east  by  the 
Neapolitan  Gate,  where,  more  than  a  cen- 
tury later,  Claudius  placed  his  magnificent 


64  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

arch,  we  pass  on  the  left  a  vast  theatre, 
not  built  upon,  but  cut  into  the  rocky  hill. 
Walking  the  length  of  the  main  street  and 
out  through  the  "  Spring  Gate  "  or  "  Gate 
of  the  Fountains  "  on  the  west,  we  pass, 
whether  within  or  without  both  walls 
or  between  the  two  I  am  not  sure,  the 
"  Aqueduct."  Here  the  rivulets  which 
gave  name  to  the  city  were  collected  in 
a  basin  which  supplied  it  with  water,  and 
discharged  the  surplus  into  the  sinuous 
stream  of  the  Gangas  upon  the  banks  of 
which  Brutus  cursed  and  Lydia  prayed. 
The  city  was  small.  High  Town  and 
Low  Town  together  included  less  than 
a  mile  north  and  south  by  half  that  dis- 
tance east  and  west.  Long  peace  had 
made  the  walls  seem  needless,  and  the 
wealthy  lived  in  suburbs  which  extended 
indefinitely  south  and  east  in  a  wilder- 
ness of  lovely  gardens  adorned  with 
statues  and  blooming  with  roses  famed 
throughout  the  world  for  their  beauty. 


PHILIPPI  65 

On  the  plain  south  of  the  city,  amid 
marshes  and  rivulets  which  except  for  a 
small  part  of  the  year  have  long  been 
dry,  the  battle  that  destroyed  the  last 
hope  of  the  republic  was  fought.  Here 
by  his  own  hand  died  the  "  noblest  Ro- 
man of  them  all,"  with  the  curse  upon 
his  lips,  "  May  the  gods  avenge  upon 
the  enemies  of  Rome  these  multiplied 
misfortunes !  " 

"  We  must  fly ! "  cried  some  one. 
"  Yes,"  answered  Brutus,  "  but  not  with 
our  feet,  with  our  hands,"  and  fell  upon 
his  sword. 

Cassius  had  already  killed  himself;  and 
an  almost  incredible  number  of  nobles, 
some  moved  by  patriotic  despair,  some 
by  selfish  fears,  followed  the  example  of 
these  leaders. 

Ninety-four  years  had  passed  when 
Paul,  sunjmoned  thither  as  Brutus  had 
been  by  a  vision  or  an  apparition,  entered 
Philippi.    To  understand  his  experiences 


66  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

there  and  the  epistle  written  in  view  of 
them,  one  should  keep  in  mind  two 
facts.  The  first  is  that  for  some  reason 
he  felt  more  at  home  with  the  Philip- 
pian  Christians  than  with  those  of  other 
places  ;  wrote  to  them  with  less  reserve, 
more  as  a  pastor  to  his  people  or  a 
father  to  his  family.  The  second  is  that 
Philippi  had  become  a  military  "  Colo- 
nia."  Those  born  there  had  the  rights 
of  Roman  citizenship.  The  cities  en- 
joying that  honor  were  few.  There  was 
probably  no  other  in  the  world  where 
it  was  prized  so  highly  or  guarded  so 
jealously  as  here.  When  the  magistrates 
learned  that  they  had  unwittingly  tram- 
pled upon  it,  they  were  aware  that  they 
would  probably  be  mobbed  if  the  fact 
became  known.  This  accounts  for  their 
terror  and  their  eagerness  to  keep  their 
blunder  concealed  when  Paul,  always 
alert  to  his  surroundings  and  fully  un- 
derstanding the  dilemma  in  which  they 


PHILIPPI  67 

had  placed  themselves,  informed  them 
who  he  was. 

There  seem  to  have  been  few  Jews  in 
the  city,  perhaps  not  enough  for  a  syna- 
gogue. The  children  of  Abraham  who 
lived  there  met  for  worship  in  a  "  porch  " 
outside  the  walls,  and  probably  upon 
the  banks  of  the  stream  which  drank 
the  blood  of  Brutus. 

There  is  a  suggestiveness  in  the  fact 
that  the  first  Christian  convert  at  Phil- 
ippi  appears  to  have  been  a  woman. 

The  original  cult  of  the  region  was 
the  worship  of  Dionysus.  His  minis- 
ters were  priestesses.  Wild-eyed,  loose- 
haired,  they  danced  and  rushed  to  and 
fro  in  riotous  orgies ;  and  these  Baccha- 
nalian revels,  led  always  by  women  be- 
lieved to  be  inspired  by  the  Deity,  formed 
one  of  the  most  diabolical  features  of 
paganism.  That  this  cult  survived  in  the 
time  of  Paul  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
one  such  woman,  supposed  to  be  pos- 


68  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

sessed  by  the  god,  a  slave  girl  who  by 
her  "  soothsaying  brought  much  gain  " 
to  her  owners,  followed  Paul  about  the 
streets  declaring  that  he  was  the  servant 
of  the  most  High  God. 

Ten  or  twelve  years  passed.  The 
Apostle  came  to  love  the  little  church  at 
Philippi  as  he  loved  no  other.  To  it  more 
than  to  others  he  looked  for  sympathy. 
It  was  the  only  one  which  never  gave 
him  cause  to  shed  a  tear.  To  it  he  wrote, 
and  wrote  amid  circumstances  which  we 
should  consider  most  depressing,  the 
letter  that  may  properly  be  called  his 
"joy  song,"  for  none  of  his  other  writ- 
ings approaches  it  in  gladness  of  heart. 

He  is  a  prisoner  at  Rome.  One  can 
almost  hear  the  clank  of  the  chain  bind- 
ing his  right  arm  to  the  Pretorian  as  he 
draws  it  over  the  parchment  in  writing. 
And  one  can  read  between  the  lines  re- 
miniscences of  Philippi  and  revelations 
of  Rome. 


PHILIPPI  69 

I.  The  battle  of  Philippi  was  natu- 
rally counted  by  Augustus  the  most 
important  ever  fought.  It  established 
the  empire  and  gave  him  his  throne. 
He  therefore  dignified  the  city  with  su- 
preme honors  and  carved  his  name  upon 
its  monuments.  Claudius  adorned  it 
with  a  triumphal  arch  commemorating 
the  same  victory.  The  incidents  of  the 
battle  must  have  been  familiar  to  every 
one  who  walked  its  streets  in  the  first 
century,  for  inscriptions  at  each  turn 
brought  them  to  mind.  Plutarch  wrote 
only  what  was  matter  of  common  report 
when  he  attributed  to  Brutus  this  dis- 
quisition, "When  1  was  young,  Cas- 
sius  ...  I  blamed  Cato  for  killing  him- 
self, thinking  it  an  irreligious  act  and 
not  a  valiant  one  among  men  to  try  to 
evade  the  divine  course  of  things  and 
not  fearlessly  to  receive  and  undergo  the 
evil  that  shall  happen,  but  to  run  away 
from  it.    But  now  in  my  own  fortunes  I 


70  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

am  of  another  mind ;  for  if  Providence 
shall  not  dispose  of  what  we  now  under- 
take according  to  our  wishes,  I  resolve 
to  put  no  further  hopes  or  warlike  pre- 
parations to  the  proof,  but  will  die  con- 
tented with  my  fortunes.  For  I  have 
already  given  up  my  life  to  my  country, ^^ 

Was  there  no  remembrance  of  this 
when  the  Apostle  wrote,  "  For  me  to  live 
is  Christ.  ...  I  am  in  a  strait  betwixt 
two,  having  a  desire  to  depart,  and  to  be 
with  Christ ;  which  is  far  better :  never- 
theless to  abide  in  the  flesh  is  more  need- 
ful for  you."  Therefore  he  will  not 
imitate  Brutus  even  in  his  wish  to  die. 

II.  Once  and  once  only  Paul  used  the 
word  erroneously  translated  in  our  re- 
ceived version  "  robbery."  It  is  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Philippians,  and  signifies 
"a  thing  to  be  snatched  at."  In  less 
forceful  but  more  dignified  phrase  the 
Revised  Version  renders  it  "  a  thing  to 
be  grasped."    Christ   thought   equality 


PHILIPPI  71 

with  God  a  thing  not  to  be  snatched  at, 
but  certified  as  his  by  humility  and  re- 
nunciation. 

Where  else  on  earth  could  that  de- 
scription appear  so  forceful  as  in  the  city 
where  the  most  important  and  the  most 
familiar  event  in  its  history  had  been  a 
battle  in  which  the  four  most  powerful 
men  in  the  world  fought,  each  trying  to 
"  snatch "  for  himself  universal  sover- 
eignty ?  Where  else  would  the  contrast 
between  the  ways  of  Christ  and  those 
of  human  ambition  appear  so  conspicu- 
ous as  in  the  city  where  the  victory  of 
Caesar  over  Brutus  was  blazoned  upon 
arches,  inscribed  upon  the  stage  of  the 
theatre,  carved  upon  the  Citadel,  and  kept 
constantly  in  mind  by  the  divine  honors 
which  had  been  instituted  to  Octavius 
and  continued  to  his  successors  ? 

III.  Paul,  remember,  was  at  Rome. 
He  was  constantly  in  the  company  — 
for  a  considerable  time  at  least  —  of  one 


72  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

of  the  Pretorian  Guards.  They  were 
coarse  men.  Their  vocation  kept  them 
near  the  emperor.  They  were  idle  and 
indolent  and  familiar  with  all  the  scan- 
dals of  the  palace.  He  must  have  heard 
their  gossip.  Indeed  he  implies  that  he 
did  by  the  knowledge  he  shows  of  what 
was  going  on  among  them.  I  dare  only 
hint  at  the  foulness  with  which  they 
reeked.  Nero  was  emperor  and  Nero 
was  their  favorite.  That  is  enough  to 
say.  They  must  have  chattered  about 
what  they  saw  and  heard.  There  was 
nothing  else  for  them  to  talk  of.  Con- 
versations like  this  must  have  occurred 
in  Paul's  hearing,  for  if  his  friends  were 
allowed  to  visit  him,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  at  a  time  when  the  Pretorians 
were  emperor-makers  and  enjoyed  bound- 
less license,  no  one  of  them  would  have 
submitted  to  the  prohibition  of  visits 
from  his  cronies. 

"  Yesterday  all  Rome  was  at  the  the- 


PHILIPPI  73 

atre,"  I  fancy  one  of  them  saying.  "  Lady 
Blank  had  on  a  purple  gown.  When  the 
emperor  saw  it  he  flew  into  a  fury,  sent 
three  of  us  to  tear  off  her  clothes.  We 
did  it,  too,  and  she  had  to  go  home  naked 
as  she  was  born."  "  That 's  nothing,"  ex- 
claims another;  "his  brother  sang  a  song 
at  court,  and  sang  it  so  well  that  Nero, 
who  sings  like  a  frog  and  thinks  him- 
self a  nightingale,  went  crazy  with  envy 
and  told  the  old  witch  Locusta  to  poison 
him  at  dinner.  She  tried  to,  but  it  did  n*t 
work.  So  Nero  pounded  her  black  and 
blue  till  she  promised  to  try  again.  He 
would  n't  trust  her  alone,  and  made  her 
try  her  poison  on  some  pigs.  It  killed 
them  in  a  flash.  So  he  got  his  brother 
to  dinner  and  fed  him  on  the  devil's  mix- 
ture. That  ended  him,  and  yesterday 
Locusta  was  made  a  duchess  by  the  old 
boy  for  doing  it  —  the  old  hag  !  " 

If  I  should  describe  the  half  of  what 
was  going  on  in  the  palace  and  among 


74  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

the  Pretorians  around  him,  these  words 
written  by  the  Apostle  to  his  beloved 
Philippians  would  seem  the  gasping  of 
one  in  a  sewer,  smothering  for  fresh  air. 
"Brethren,  whatsoever  things  are  true, 
whatsoever  things  are  honorable,  what- 
soever things  are  just,  whatsoever  things 
are  pure,  .  .  .  whatsoever  things  are  of 
good  report ;  if  there  be  any  virtue,  if 
there  he  any  praise,  think  on  these 
things/' 

IV.  There  is  a  coincidence  which  may 
be  mentioned  by  way  of  introduction  to 
a  more  important  matter,  as  it  may  pos- 
sibly have  occurred  to  the  Apostle. 

Two  women  of  the  church  at  Philippi, 
Euodia  and  Syntyche,  were  at  odds, 
seriously  so  it  seems,  for  Paul  exhorts 
them  to  come  to  an  agreement  and  "  be- 
seeches" a  friend  to  help  them  do  so. 

We  are  somewhat  at  sea  for  accurate 
dates,  but  about  this  time  the  bitter  ri- 
valry  between   two   court   ladies   filled 


PHILIPPI  75 

Rome  with  scandal.  Their  names  were 
Octavia  and  Poppaea.  They  were  fight- 
ing each  other  for  the  affections  of  Nero. 
The  peculiarities  of  that  emperor  were 
such  that  in  this  contest  Octavia  was 
hopelessly  handicapped  by  the  fact  that 
she  was  his  wife.  He  therefore  had  her 
murdered  in  a  particularly  gruesome  way, 
and  her  untimely  fate  excited  the  com- 
passion of  the  city.  The  incident  was 
an  al  fresco  painting  of  the  miniature 
squabble  at  Philippi. 

But  there  is  another  passage  in  the 
epistle  which  has  perplexed  commenta- 
tors. It  is  the  sharp  and  sudden  and 
apparently  uncalled-for  reference,  in  the 
opening  of  the  third  chapter,  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Jews.  Dr.  A.  C.  McGif- 
fert  (page  388  of  "  The  Apostolic 
Age  ")  has  stated  the  difficulties  of  the 
passage  with  great  force  and  suggested  a 
way  of  escape  from  them. 

It  seems  to  me  that  they  vanish  at 


76  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  name  of  Poppaea.  That  villain- 
ous woman,  if  she  were  not  a  Jewish 
proselyte,  was  certainly  a  partisan  of  the 
Jews.  She  was  an  intimate  friend  of  a 
Jewish  actor  named  Aliturius,  "  much 
beloved  by  Nero,**  says  Josephus,  and 
to  her  influence  over  the  emperor  that 
historian  attributes  the  success  of  the 
mission  upon  which  he  was  sent  to 
Rome.  If,  as  is  probable,  she  was  used 
by  other  Jews  as  she  had  been  by  Jose- 
phus and  Aliturius,  the  fact  explains, 
not  only  PauFs  outbreak  of  indignation, 
but  also  some  of  the  hostilities  to  Christ 
in  Nero's  "  palace,"  referred  to  in  the 
first  chapter  of  the  epistle. 

The  walls  of  a  building  excavated  in 
1857,  which  seems  to  have  been  a  train- 
ing school  for  court  pages,  were  found 
covered  with  rude  pictures  and  inscrip- 
tions scratched  upon  them  with  nails  or 
knives.  Some  of  these  express  the  im- 
patience of  schoolboys  with  their  tasks. 


PHILIPPI  77 

There  Is  a  sketch  in  outline  of  a  donkey- 
turning  a  mill,  and  beneath  it  the  words : 
"  Work,  work,  little  donkey,  as  I  have 
worked  myself,  and  thou  shalt  be  re- 
warded for  it." 

There  Is  another  which  illustrates  the 
first  chapter  of  Phlllpplans.  It  is  the 
rough  outline  of  a  man  with  an  ass*s  head 
stretched  upon  a  cross.  Beside  It  stands 
a  youth  in  the  attitude  of  prayer,  and 
beneath  is  written,  "Alexaminos  wor- 
ships his  God."  ' 

Consider  what  your  feelings  would  be 
in  an  atmosphere  reeking  with  such 
contemptuous  mockery  of  your  Saviour, 
and  then  read  Paul's  words  penned  while 
he  breathed  It :  — 

"  Some  Indeed  preach  Christ  even  of 
envy  and  strife;  and  some  also  of  good 
will :  the  one  do  it  of  love,  knowing  that 
I  am  set  for  the  defence  of  the  gospel : 
but  the  other  proclaim  Christ  of  faction, 

*  For  these  and  other  graffiti,  see  Lanciani. 


78  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

not  sincerely,  thinking  to  raise  up  afflic- 
tion for  me  in  my  bonds.  What  then  ? 
only  that  in  every  way,  whether  in  pre- 
tence or  in  truth,  Christ  is  proclaimed ; 
and  therein  I  rejoice,  yea,  and  will  re- 
joice. .  ,  .  Wherefore  also  God  highly 
exalted  him,  and  gave  unto  him  the  name 
which  is  above  every  name ;  that  at  the 
name  of  Jesus  every  knee  should  bow, 
of  things  in  heaven  and  things  on  ear4:h 
and  things  under  the  earth,  and  that 
every  tongue  should  confess  that  Jesus 
Christ  is  Lord,  to  the  glory  of  God  the 
Father." 


IV 

THESSALONICA 

THE   CITY   OF  THE   SUFFERERS 

If  you  lay  your  right  hand  palm  down- 
ward on  the  table,  the  four  fingers  touch- 
ing each  other  and  the  extended  thumb 
crooked  upward  at  its  second  joint,  the 
part  between  the  wrist  and  the  line 
formed  by  the  tip  of  your  thumb  and 
the  second  joints  of  your  fingers  will 
serve  for  a  map  of  the  iEgean  Sea. 

At  the  second  joint  of  your  little  fin- 
ger were  the  Troy  of  Homer  and  the 
Troas  of  St.  Paul.  The  north  shore, 
formed  by  the  corresponding  joints  of 
your  three  other  fingers,  was  the  coast 
of  Thrace  and  Macedonia.  Should  your 
fingers  here  change  from  water  into  land, 
they  would  pass  through  those  pro- 
vinces, and  their  nails  would  represent 


8o  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  Balkans,  which  bound  Bulgaria  on 
the  south. 

Your  thumb  is  the  Thermaic  Gulf, 
and  the  open  space  between  it  and  your 
forefinger  a  peninsula  which  has  been 
distinguished  by  the  grave  of  Euripi- 
des, the  cradle  of  Aristotle,  the  canal 
dug  by  Xerxes  to  get  his  scoundrels 
dry-shod  into  Greece,  and  by  the  largest 
and  most  splendid  group  of  monasteries 
ever  known.  The  peninsula  is  a  comb 
with  three  teeth  thrust  southward  into 
the  sea.  Each  tooth  is  thirty  miles  long, 
and  the  eastern  of  the  three  terminates 
in  Mt.  Athos,  the  terror  of  sailors  in 
ancient  times.  The  seven  thousand 
monks  who  occupy  the  territory  it  de- 
fends, though  zealous  worshipers  of 
the  Virgin,  are  so  fearful  of  all  other 
females  that  they  will  not  allow  a  cow, 
a  hen,  or  even  a  she-cat,  much  less  a 
woman,  to  enter  their  domain. 

At  the  tip  of  your  thumb  was  a  city. 


THESSALONICA  8i 

called  from  immemorial  time  on  account 
of  the  Hot  Springs  near  it,  "  Therma/* 
It  was  the  first  European  fortress  occu- 
pied by  Xerxes.  In  a  later  age  it  was 
renamed,  to  honor  the  half-sister  of  Alex- 
ander the  Great,  "  Thessalonica."  Like 
the  triumphal  arch  which  once  adorned 
its  eastern  entrance,  its  introductory  syl- 
lable has  perished,  so  that  it  is  known 
to-day  as  Salonica. 

A  little  outside  the  base  of  your  thumb, 
in  clear  view  from  the  upper  streets  of 
this  city,  rising  nine  thousand  feet  above 
the  sea,  stands  Mt.  Olympus.  Its  glit- 
tering dome  of  snow  was  the  throne 
before  which,  in  Homer's  time,  Jove 
gathered  in  council  the  deities  of  Greece. 
Dense  forests  at  the  mountain's  base  con- 
cealed the  Pierian  Spring,  beside  which 
the  Muses  were  born  and  Orpheus  first 
saw  the  light. 

Close  to  the  southeast  of  Olympus, 
and    also    visible    from    Thessalonica, 


82  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

stands  Mt.  Ossa.  The  gorge  between 
the  two,  named,  either  from  the  steep- 
ness of  its  sides  or  because  it  was  made 
by  a  single  stroke  of  Neptune's  trident, 
"  The  Cut/*  or  in  Greek,  "  Tempe,"  is 
the  most  celebrated  valley  in  the  world. 
Here  Orpheus  practiced  the  melodies 
which  drew  the  enraptured  trees  to  fol- 
low him  and  opened  the  gates  of  death 
before  him.  Here  Apollo  made  atone- 
ment for  slaying  the  Python  and  plucked 
the  branch  which,  planted  beside  the 
Castalian  Spring,  grew  into  the  sacred 
laurel  of  Delphi. 

From  Thessalonica,  therefore,  the 
Apostle  who  proclaimed  another  king 
than  Caesar  first  saw  the  citadel  of  those 
shadowy  deities  who  were  to  vanish 
before  the  unknown  God  he  came  to 
declare. 

I.  Having  located  our  city,  let  us 
enter  it.  St.  Paul  would  not  recognize 
it  now.    Scarcely  more  than  the  site  on 


THESSALONICA  83 

which  it  stands  remains  unchanged.  For 
a  little  distance  from  the  gulf  the  ground 
slopes  gently  upward,  then  rises  more 
abruptly.  The  ancient  walls  can  still  be 
traced.  They  were  six  miles  in  circuit, 
and  were  flanked  with  frequent  towers. 
The  north  wall  formed  a  horseshoe  curv- 
ing to  the  north  ;  the  south  wall,  in  a  line 
parallel  to  the  water  and  almost  touch- 
ing it,  joined  the  calks  of  the  shoe,  which 
were  defensive  towers  of  great  strength. 
A  broad  avenue  running  parallel  to  the 
water  wall  bisected  the  city.  This  avenue 
formed  a  part  of  that  military  highway, 
named  the  "  Egnation,"  by  which  the 
Hellespont  was  joined  to  the  Adriatic, 
and  Thessalonica  was  the  most  precious 
pearl  upon  the  strand.  Just  inside  the 
western  wall  this  main  street  was  spanned 
by  a  triumphal  arch,  probably  erected  by 
Octavius,  to  commemorate  the  victory 
at  Philippi.  The  arch  has  disappeared, 
but  its  foundations  remain.    They  have 


84  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

been  excavated,  and  the  names  of  the  city 
magistrates  inscribed  upon  them  bear 
the  title  "  Politarch/*  In  the  Book  of 
Acts  the  same  title  is  given  them.  As 
that  title  has  been  found  nowhere  else 
in  ancient  literature  or  on  ancient  monu- 
ments, the  coincidence  attests  the  accu- 
racy of  the  author  of  the  book.  Two 
centuries  after  Paul  a  second  arch  was 
raised  over  the  same  street  near  the  east 
wall,  probably  to  honor  Constantine*s 
victory  over  the  Sarmatians.  Not  far 
north  of  the  spot  upon  which  this  arch 
was  placed,  it  is  in  the  highest  degree 
probable  that  there  stood  in  the  days  of 
the  Apostle  a  small  temple  for  the  mys- 
terious worship  of  the  Kabiri.  What 
that  worship  was  is  not  known.  We  can 
say,  however,  that  the  parents  of  Alex- 
ander the  Great  visited  Samothrace  to 
take  part  in  its  mysteries,  much  as  in 
our  time  pilgrims  go  to  Lourdes ;  that 
those  who  did  that  were  decorated  with 


THESSALONICA  85 

a  purple  ribbon ;  were  believed  to  be 
secured  against  all  dangers  at  sea  and 
from  certain  perils  on  land ;  that  the 
penalty  for  revealing  what  they  had  seen 
in  the  mysteries  was  death ;  and  that 
there  is  good  evidence  for  believing  that 
the  majestic  structure  erected  in  the  reign 
of  Trajan  was  built  over  the  little  tem- 
ple or  shrine,  which  advertised  to  the 
eyes  of  St.  Paul  the  existence  of  the  cult. 
Trajan's  Temple,  copied  from  the  Pan- 
theon, was  an  immense  dome  springing 
from  the  ground,  and  could  be  entered 
only  by  subterranean  approaches,  as 
neither  door  nor  window  broke  its  vast 
expanse  save  the  one  round  opening  at 
the  top,  through  which  the  sunbeams  fell 
and  the  smoke  of  sacrifice  ascended. 

A  line  drawn  due  south  from  this 
structure  would  have  bisected  the  rich 
and  aristocratic  quarter  of  the  city. 
Here  stood  the  Hippodrome,  of  which 
there  will  be  matters  of  importance  to  re- 


86  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

port  anon.  It  was  an  ellipse  of  immense 
size,  much  larger  than  the  Coliseum,  but 
more  like  the  Flavian  Amphitheatre  than 
the  Circus  Maximus.  A  subterranean 
gallery  similar  to  that  through  which  the 
Roman  emperors  passed  to  their  throne 
in  the  Coliseum  connected  it  with  the 
celebrated  palace  of  Diocletian. 

Gardens  as  beautiful  as  those  which 
encircled  Athens  in  her  prime  and  far 
more  extensive  surrounded  the  whole 
city  except  on  the  water  front. 

II.  For  more  than  two  millenniums, 
Thessalonica  has  been  an  important 
centre  of  influence,  and  is  still  the  sec- 
ond city  of  European  Turkey.  During 
the  period  marked  by  the  most  venom- 
ous quarreling  over  creeds  which  has 
ever  disgraced  the  Christian  church,  it 
never  ceased  to  be  called  "the  ortho- 
dox city,"  and  for  centuries  was  the 
Gibraltar  of  the  Greek  empire  against 
northern  barbarians. 


THESSALONICA  87 

The  little  company  of  Thessalonians 
won  to  Christ  by  the  preaching  of  St. 
Paul  were  by  some  cause  subjected  to 
exceptional  trials.  Aware  of  this,  the 
Apostle  wrote  them  a  letter  to  hearten 
them  in  their  "  much  affliction."  He 
urged  them  to  wait  patiently  for  the 
Saviour.  They  thought  he  meant  that 
Christ  would  soon  appear  in  visible  form 
and  set  them  free  by  physical  force.  To 
correct  that  impression  he  sent  them  a 
second  letter. 

These  two  epistles  are  the  earliest 
writings  in  the  New  Testament.  They 
have  a  special  interest  in  our  time  for  this 
reason  :  the  church  at  Thessalonica  was 
composed  of  "  working  "  people.  The 
letters  contained  the  advice  of  an  Apos- 
tle who  was  also  a  skilled  workman  to 
such  of  them  as,  driven  by  oppression 
or  allured  by  baseless  expectations,  were 
starting  toward  the  excesses  of  a  mod- 
ern strike. 


88  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

In  the  first  letter,  moved  probably  by 
reports  which  had  reached  his  ears,  he 
had  written,  "  We  beseech  you,  breth- 
ren .  .  .  that  ye  be  ambitious  to  be 
quiet,  and  to  do  your  own  business,  and 
to  work  with  your  own  hands  .  .  .  that 
ye  may  walk  honestly  toward  them  that 
are  without ;  "  that  is,  toward  the  gen- 
eral public.  But  as  this  advice  appeared 
to  have  been  ineffectual,  he  wrote  in 
the  second  letter,  "  When  we  were  with 
you,  this  we  commanded  you,  that  if 
any  would  not  work,  neither  should  he 
eat.  For  we  hear  that  there  are  some 
which  walk  among  you  disorderly,  work- 
ing not  at  all,  but  are  busybodies." 
That  is,  "  busybodies  who  do  no  busi- 
ness," which  seems  to  be  Greek  both  for 
certain  types  of  "  walking  delegates  " 
and  for  their  counterparts  in  those  cap- 
italists without  capital  who  are  called 
"  promoters." 

III.  When  St.  Paul  arrived  at  Thessa- 


THESSALONICA  89 

lonica,  the  struggle  between  Roman  im- 
perialism and  the  visible  church  which 
ended  when  the  decree  of  Constantine 
wrote  the  name  of  Christ  upon  the  pagan 
Sunday  had  just  begun.  The  imperial 
rescript  banishing  all  Jews  from  Rome 
had  been  issued.  The  record  of  it  by- 
Suetonius  is  one  of  the  only  two  pas- 
sages in  pagan  literature  containing  the 
name  of  Christ,  and  Suetonius  gets  it 
wrong.  "  Claudius,"  he  says,  "  banished 
from  Rome  all  the  Jews  who  were  con- 
tinually making  disturbances  at  the  in- 
stigation of  one  Chrestos." 

Neither  emperor  nor  historian  ever 
learned  to  distinguish  Christians  from 
Jews.  Both  supposed  Christ  to  be  a 
political  agitator  alive  in  the  year  52. 
Some  of  the  exiles  fled  to  Thessalonica. 
St.  Paul  was  probably  mistaken  for  one 
of  them.  Certainly  the  charge  urged  by 
Suetonius  was  raised  against  him  there  as 
it  had  been  at  Philippi,  "  These  all  do 


90  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

contrary  to  the  decrees  of  Caesar,  saying 
that  there  is  another  king,  one  Jesus." 
So  cried  the  Apostle's  countrymen.  To 
denounce  him  and  his  companions  as 
among  those  at  whom  the  imperial  decree 
was  aimed  would  help  to  prove  their 
own  loyalty.  Policy  sharpened  the  spear 
which  bigotry  forged.  The  accusation 
and  the  impression  it  made  upon  the 
magistrates  warned  the  Apostle  that 
Christians  would  find  in  the  Roman 
government  itself,  which  had  been  their 
protector,  their  fiercest  foe.  The  warn- 
ing was  confirmed  at  Corinth.  For  there, 
while  writing  to  the  Thessalonians,  he 
was  the  guest  of  a  family  exiled  by 
Claudius.  Their  conversation  must  have 
helped  him  to  perceive  the  approaching 
storm  which  a  few  years  later  burst  in 
the  appalling  persecution  of  Nero.  There 
was  cause  enough  for  those  exhortations 
by  which  he  strove  to  brace  the  suffer- 
ers of  Thessalonica,  not  only  against  ex- 


THESSALONICA  91 

isting  trials,  but  against  the  more  fright- 
ful terrors  of  the  future. 

If  asked  to  prove  the  general  need 
of  the  comfort  wherewith  he  comforted 
them  and  its  efficacy  also,  I  would  be- 
gin by  exhibiting  four  photographs  of 
scenes  in  their  city. 

I.  The  first  appeared  a  century  be- 
fore St.  Paul  entered  the  home  of  Jason. 
It  shows  a  gentleman  forty-two  years  old 
in  an  upper  chamber  of  one  of  the  aristo- 
cratic dwellings  of  Thessalonica.  He  is 
surrounded  by  every  luxury  wealth  can 
procure,  for  he  is  the  guest  of  a  rich  and 
devoted  adherent.  He  is  tall,  slender, 
graceful,  and  has  the  eye  of  an  eagle. 
His  face,  still  familiar  to  educated  men, 
shows  signs  of  prodigious  mental  powers. 
He  is  writing.  He  has  finished  a  letter 
to  his  wife  at  Rome,  another  to  his  bro- 
ther, and  is  inditing  a  third  to  his  most 
intimate  friend.  If  we  believe  what  he 
writes,  and  there  is  no  reason  for  doubt- 


92  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

ing  it,  his  eyes  are  blinded  and  his  parch- 
ment blotted  by  tears.  He  pours  out 
wailings  which  a  spoiled  child  of  twelve 
might  well  be  ashamed  to  utter.  The 
whining  of  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena  seems 
manly  beside  them.  "  If  you  saw  me," 
he  declares,  "  you  would  not  see  me,  not 
even  a  trace  of  me,  not  a  shadow,  but  the 
image  of  a  breathing  corpse.  Would  that 
before  this  you  had  seen  me  dead ! " 

"  Why  did  I  not  kill  myself?  "  he  ex- 
claims again  and  again. 

He  interrupts  his  self-accusations  for 
not  committing  suicide  only  to  upbraid 
the  friends  who  had  risked  their  lives  for 
his  sake.  He  reiterates  that  life  has  no 
joy  left  for  him  ;  that  he  is  without  hope 
in  the  world  ;  that  his  grief  is  more  than 
he  can  bear.  He  walks  the  floor,  wrings 
his  hands,  breaks  into  sobs  and  outcries  ; 
not  only  does  this,  but  is  not  ashamed  to 
say  that  he  does  it.  For  he  too  has,  like 
the  cheery  host  and  hostess  of  St.  Paul, 


THESSALONICA  93 

been  banished  from  Rome.  He  has  lost 
office  and  a  part  of  his  wealth,  and  the 
flattery  of  the  populace.  He  is  still 
lapped  in  luxury.  He  is  among  devoted 
friends,  yet  his  despair  is  abject. 

This  broken-hearted  sufferer  was  the 
most  cultivated  man,  the  most  brilliant 
genius  then  living.  He  had  mastered 
all  the  philosophies  of  earth  ;  could  write 
books  telling  us  how  to  grow  old  grace- 
fully, and  how  to  endure  the  ills  of  life 
serenely  —  books  which  are  still  text- 
books in  our  colleges.  He  was  one  of 
the  two  most  celebrated  orators  who 
have  ever  lived,  and  he  had  the  conso- 
lation of  believing  that  he  had  saved  his 
country  from  destruction.  But  though 
a  master  of  all  the  world's  knowledge 
and  wisdom,  he  never  learned  the  secret 
which  strengthened  St.  Paul  to  "  endure 
all  things." 

You  have  recognized  Marcus  Tullius 
Cicero. 


94  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

a.  The  second  picture  is,  I  appre- 
hend, largely  one  of  the  imagination.  It 
can  scarcely  be  wholly  so.  There  is  in 
the  Museum  of  Constantinople  a  bronze 
medal  struck  in  the  fourth  century  which 
needs  to  be  accounted  for.  It  bears  the 
head  of  a  common  Roman  soldier  with 
the  name  "  Demetrius."  '  Moreover, 
something  remarkable  must  have  oc- 
curred to  start  the  legends  which  per- 
petuate that  soldier's  memory,  and  to 
enthrone  him  rather  than  St.  Paul  as  the 
patron  saint  of  Thessalonica.  But  even 
were  it  wholly  without  foundation  in  fact, 
the  tale  of  the  Bollandists  would  repre- 
sent so  vividly  and  so  accurately  scenes 
often  witnessed  by  the  early  church  as 
to  make  it  worth  repeating. 

Scene.  The  Amphitheatre  of  Thessa- 
lonica. 

Time.   303  a.  d. 

'  Professor  Ramsay  holds  that  Demetrius  is  only 
a  Christianized  name  of  pagan  Demeter. 


THESSALONICA  95 

The  tiers  are  crowded.  A  private  sol- 
dier stripped  of  his  arms  stands  naked 
in  the  arena.  His  name  is  Demetrius. 
A  ring  of  soldiers  surrounds  him.  Each 
of  them  holds  a  spear  pointed  at  his 
heart.  A  voice  of  command  asks,  "  Will 
you  curse  Jesus  Christ  ? " 

To  those  far  off  it  sounded  like  thun- 
der. To  those  who  saw  his  face  it  seemed 
that  an  angel  spoke  to  him.  For  at  the 
name  Jesus,  to  which  every  knee  shall 
bow,  he  kneels  and  a  glory  flashes  from 
his  countenance,  while  he  replies :  — 

"  Christ  is  Lord  !  " 

The  multitude  gnash  their  teeth.  The 
spears  pierce  his  heart.  But  a  great  joy 
fills  his  soul.  He  knows  little  else,  but 
he  has  the  knowledge  which  strength- 
ened St.  Paul  to  "  endure  all  things." 

A  few  years  passed  and  then  —  this 
is  authentic  history  —  whenever  foes 
invaded  the  city,  its  citizens  comforted 
one  another  with  these  words,  "They 


96  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

cannot  harm  us,  for  Demetrius  will  pro- 
tect us."  And  when,  as  occurred  four 
times  to  her,  the  city  was  captured, 
sacked,  and  burned,  her  streets  re- 
sounded with  this  wail  of  despair,  — 

"  Woe  !  Woe  !  Repent !  Our  sins  have 
driven  Demetrius  from  us." 

3.  It  is  the  year  324  a.  d.  The  sov- 
ereignty of  the  world  has  been  divided 
between  two  brothers-in-law,  Constan- 
tine  is  ruler  of  the  West,  Licinius  of  the 
East.  Constantine  has  bowed  his  knee 
to  the  name  of  Christ.  Licinius  hates 
the  name  with  a  dull,  brutal,  implacable 
malignity.  The  battle  of  Scutari  has 
finally  made  Constantine  sole  emperor. 
Sparing  the  life  of  his  rival,  he  has 
banished  him  to  Thessalonica.  Here, 
after  ruling  half  the  world  for  sixteen 
years,  stripped  of  every  dignity,  impo- 
tent, friendless,  without  a  follower, 
gnashing  his  teeth  upon  the  Christians 
whom  he  dares  not  even  insult,  the  de- 


THESSALONICA  97 

posed  potentate  gnawed  his  own  heart 
till,  crazed  by  despair,  he  made  the  futile 
clutch  at  power  for  which  his  life  paid 
the  penalty. 

4.  The  fourth  picture  represents  a 
diamond  of  finest  water  set  in  black 
enamel.  It  cannot  be  photographed. 
The  gem  is  too  brilliant,  the  setting  too 
dark  for  art  to  reproduce.  This  may  be 
the  reason  why  it  is  so  little  known,  for 
the  facts  are  uncontroverted. 

When  Thessalonica  had  become  an 
almost  perfect  specimen  of  all  that  a 
Christian  community  ought  not  to  be, 
there  appeared  in  it  an  almost  perfect 
specimen  of  all  that  a  Christian  ought 
to  be. 

History  can  show  few  sharper  con- 
trasts than  that  between  western  and 
eastern  Christendom  during  the  twelfth 
century.  It  was  more  radical  than  that 
between  either  and  those  Mussulmans 
against  whom  both  had  joined   hands 


98  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

but  not  hearts.  Throughout  western 
Europe  the  ideal  of  Christian  manhood 
was  a  brutal  prize  fighter,  who  neither 
feared  God  nor  regarded  man,  enslaved 
by  a  religion  which  made  him  tremble 
before  an  unseen  being  whom  he  called 
God,  and  whom  the  scriptures  call  the 
devil.  The  only  virtue  worshiped  was 
physical  courage.  The  only  vice  de- 
spised was  physical  cowardice. 

The  Greeks,  on  the  other  hand,  had 
become  a  congregation  of  cowards.  They 
despised  the  courage  of  the  Latins  as 
stupid  savagery ;  considered  deceit  and 
treachery  weapons  which  distinguished 
men  from  brutes,  and  though  voluble  in 
professions  of  loyalty  to  Christ,  had  no 
religion  at  all.  The  diplomacy  of  Rome 
was  threats  enforced  by  spears.  The 
diplomacy  of  Constantinople  was  lies 
supplemented  by  poisoned  wine  and 
assassin's  daggers.  Thessalonica  was  a 
nest   of  debauched  manikins,   fighting 


THESSALONICA  99 

each  other  over  trivial  points  of  doctrine 
as  angry  apes  contend  for  the  straws  in 
their  cage.  Her  wealth  was  no  less 
enormous  than  her  profligacy.  She  was 
more  depraved  than  even  Constantino- 
ple, because  her  proximity  to  the  West 
had  kept  smouldering  in  her  heart  a  su- 
perstitious worship  of  Demetrius  which 
made  her  in  some  degree  conscious  of 
her  degradation,  and  put  her  in  the  class 
of  those  who  know  their  Master's  will 
and  do  it  not. 

In  1 1 85,  when  Norman  William  II 
of  Sicily  besieged  the  city,  Eustathius 
was  its  bishop.  Though  incomparably 
the  most  learned  man  of  his  time,  his 
character  eclipsed  his  learning.  In  a 
council  convened  by  the  Byzantine 
emperor  for  the  sole  purpose  of  en- 
forcing a  treacherous  and  secret  league 
with  the  Mussulmans  against  the  west- 
ern Christians,  he  had  single-handed 
thwarted  the  imperial  purpose.    In  order 


100  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

to  nullify  his  influence,  the  emperor, 
with  fury  in  his  heart  and  flattery  on 
his  lips,  sent  him  from  court  to  the  See 
of  Thessalonica.  There  his  sturdy  hon- 
esty and  the  invincible  skill  with  which 
he  fought  a  nefarious  municipal  ring 
that  had  clutched  the  city's  throat  pro- 
voked an  opposition  which  drove  him 
into  exile.  No  sooner  had  he  left  than 
the  men  who  had  driven  him  away  be- 
gan to  fight  each  other  with  a  fury  that 
threatened  to  make  their  city  a  sham- 
bles. To  save  it  from  suicide  they  sent  a 
delegation  who  besought  him  on  their 
knees  to  return.  He  instantly  complied 
and  his  return  brought  peace. 

In  religion  his  attacks  upon  supersti- 
tion and  hypocrisy  were  equally  effec- 
tive. His  see  included  the  monasteries 
of  Athos.  These  were  filled  with  lazy 
beggars,  some  of  whom  had  entered 
them  for  loaves  and  fishes,  some  for 
the  sake  of  being  called  "  Rabbi."    To 


THESSALONICA  loi 

these  he  said,  "  You  are  hypocrites 
from  head  to  foot."  Others,  and  their 
name  was  legion,  who  were  seeking  to 
earn  heaven  by  passing  their  lives  on 
treetops,  standing  on  pillars,  coffining 
themselves  in  iron  coats,  or  spending 
their  days  in  caves  where  no  ray  of  light 
could  reach  them,  he  treated  more  ten- 
derly. Though  they  were  counted  holy 
men,  he  said  to  them  and  of  them,  "Ye 
are  deceivers  of  the  people  and  rebels 
against  God.  Christ  said  his  yoke  was 
easy  and  his  burden  light,  but  ye  dare 
to  teach  that  his  yoke  is  hard  and  his 
burden  heavy.  Christ  told  his  disciples 
to  go  into  the  world  and  ye  have  fled 
out  of  the  world." 

In  this  marvelous  man,  who  has  been 
too  little  remembered,  were  combined 
the  devotion  of  St.  Francis,  the  bravery 
of  Huss,  the  energy  of  Luther,  and  the 
executive  ability  of  Loyola.  He  was  as 
far  in  advance  of  his  age  as  Bruno  was 


102  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

of  his,  but  he  enforced  his  opinions  with 
a  tact  that  not  only  saved  him  from 
martyrdom,  but  made  them  effective. 

When  the  Norman  fleet  approached, 
Eustathius  strove  in  vain  to  make  the 
people  appreciate  their  danger.  They 
would  not  lift  a  finger  for  defense.  They 
seemed  to  despise  the  Franks  more  than 
they  hated  them.  There  was  also,  it  is 
probable,  some  sincerity  in  their  answer 
to  the  bishop's  exhortations,  "  Deme- 
trius will  sink  their  ships." 

The  bishop's  reputation  was  such  that 
before  attacking  the  city  the  Franks  sent 
word  entreating  him  to  leave  the  place 
before  they  wreaked  upon  it  the  ven- 
geance its  sins  had  provoked  from  out- 
raged Deity,  because  if  by  any  accident 
he  should  be  slain  in  the  assault  "  the 
light  of  the  world  would  be  put  out." 

His  reply  was  of  course  that  the  shep- 
herd must  not  fly  when  the  wolves  ap- 
proach. 


THESSALONICA  103 

The  massacre  which  ensued  ranks 
among  the  unique  and  conspicuous  hor- 
rors of  history. 

The  coward  Greeks  attempted  no 
resistance.  Instead  of  defending  their 
strong  walls,  they  rushed  into  their 
churches  shrieking  prayers  to  Demetrius 
or  increasing  the  panic  by  their  cries 
"  Woe !  woe  1  Demetrius  has  forsaken 
us  1 

The  Norman  soldiers  spared  neither 
sex  nor  age.  There  have  been  few 
manifestations  of  the  deviHshness  of  reli- 
gious animosities  equal  to  the  following. 
Franks  and  Greeks  each  counted  the 
other  heretics.  The  Greek  Church  de- 
clared itself  the  true  New  Jerusalem. 
The  Franks  mocked  that  claim.  To 
ridicule  it,  probably  informed  by  their 
priests  of  the  words  in  the  Apocalypse 
"without  are  dogs  and  sorcerers,"  the 
soldiers  gathered  around  the  churches 
in   which    the   quaking   fugitives   were 


104  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

supplicating  the  God  in  whose  name 
these  same  soldiers  were  fighting ;  stood 
for  a  while  in  mocking  irony  barking 
like  dogs,  then  rushed  in  and  slaugh- 
tered the  suppliants  before  their  altars. 

During  these  horrors,  Eustathius,  com- 
manding, entreating,  catching  arms  up- 
lifted to  strike,  throwing  himself  as  a 
shield  before  the  defenseless,  seemed 
almost  omnipresent ;  and  though  the 
death  work  lasted  three  hours,  no  acci- 
dent harmed  him,  and  when  the  mur- 
derers paused  to  breathe,  his  eloquence 
moved  their  leaders  to  stop  the  mas- 
sacre and  accept  a  ransom  for  the  city. 

IV.  The  lamentations  of  Cicero,  the 
triumph  of  Demetrius,  the  despair  of 
Licinius,  and  the  heroism  of  Eustathius 
illustrate  the  universal  need  of  guidance 
to  that  source  of  strength  to  which  St. 
Paul  pointed  eight  times  in  his  two  short 
letters  to  the  Thessalonians.  But  they 
are,  among  the  facts  which  justify  the  title 


THESSALONICA  105 

of  this  paper,  as  drops  in  a  gallon  of 
misery. 

During  four  centuries  Thessalonica 
was  the  main  bulwark  of  the  Byzantine 
Empire  in  Saracenic,  Gothic,  and  Scla- 
vonic wars.  Almost  constantly  under  fire, 
she  bore  the  brunt  of  those  invasions. 
She  was  captured,  pillaged,  burned,  by 
Egyptians,  Latins,  Turks.  Twice  she 
was  razed  almost  to  the  ground.  Yet 
after  every  devastation  she  revived  as 
a  plant  in  spring.  When  in  904  a.  d., 
after  sacking  and  burning  her,  the  Arabs 
of  the  Nile  carried  twenty-two  thousand 
of  her  choicest  youths  and  maidens  into 
slavery,  it  seemed  that  she  must  cease  to 
be.  But  though  cast  down  she  was  not 
destroyed,  and  two  centuries  later  she 
appeared  as  rich  and  beautiful  as  ever. 

Her  most  widely  known  tribulation 
affords  a  signal  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  the  Power  in  whom  Paul  trusted  to 
bring  good  out  of  evil  sometimes  sends 


io6  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

his  best  blessings  by  the  hands  of  sor- 
row. 

Thessalonica  had  been  the  favorite 
residence  of  the  Emperor  Theodosius. 
Four  years  he  had  held  it  against  the 
repeated  assaults  of  the  Ostrogoths,  and 
even  after  assuming  the  purple  he  was 
loath  to  leave  the  place.  Here  he  united 
with  the  church.  In  the  winter  of  370 
an  illness  brought  him  to  the  door  of 
death.  Though  a  Christian  by  inherit- 
ance and  conviction,  he  had  not  been 
baptized,  but  now  he  asked  and  received 
baptism  into  the  name  of  Him  who 
came,  not  to  destroy  men's  lives,  but  to 
save  them.  Mark  how  he  fulfilled  his 
vows. 

Chariot  racing  was  becoming  the  fa- 
vorite sport  of  the  Greek  cities.  It  had 
not  yet  reached  the  popularity  it  attained 
in  the  time  of  Justinian,  when  the  colors 
worn  by  rival  charioteers  became  badges 
dividing   into    rancorous   factions,    not 


THESSALONICA  107 

only  the  betting  rings,  but  the  state  and 
the  church.  Beginning  in  the  circus,  it 
finally  severed  families,  ruptured  the 
court,  rent  the  church.  In  the  conflicts 
between  the  two  parties,  civilians,  sol- 
diers, emperors,  bishops,  took  part  with 
furious  passion.  Fathers  fought  their 
sons,  sons  slew  their  fathers,  and  women 
with  weapons  in  their  hands  battled  on 
one  side  or  the  other.  No  man  dreamed 
of  winning  office  in  either  church  or  state 
without  the  support  of  one  of  these  fac- 
tions. 

When  Justinian  was  crowned,  the 
Greens  were  believed  to  favor  the  cause 
of  his  predecessor.  The  Blues,  there- 
fore, espoused  that  of  the  new  emperor. 
Moved  by  gratitude  or  fear,  he  allowed 
them  a  license  compared  with  which  the 
most  odious  excesses  of  modern  political 
thugs  seem  virtuous.  Men  wearing  the 
blue  ribbon  rioted,  robbed,  murdered, 
and  set  fire  to   houses  with  impunity. 


io8  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

Five  years  that  state  of  things  continued. 
It  ended  in  an  insurrection  which  nearly- 
cost  Justinian  his  throne  and  his  life, 
and  was  not  suppressed  until  the  palace, 
with  a  large  part  of  the  capital,  lay  in 
ashes  and  thirty  thousand  citizens  had 
been  slain  by  Belisarius. 

This  silly  and  fatal  fashion  had  seized 
Thessalonica  when  in  390  her  favorite 
charioteer  committed  a  pestilential  crime. 
Botheric,  the  imperial  general  in  com- 
mand of  the  garrison,  imprisoned  the 
culprit.  The  populace  clamored  for  his 
release.  To  them  the  most  disgusting 
crimes  seemed  trifles  compared  with  the 
loss  of  a  race  to  a  rival  city.  The  im- 
prisonment of  their  favorite  might  mean 
that.  Botheric  refused  to  release  the 
criminal.  The  race  day  arrived.  The 
people  assembled.  Their  favorite  did 
not  appear.  In  sudden  fury  they  as- 
saulted the  garrison,  which  was  small, 
slew  the  general,  with  several  of  his  sol- 


THESSALONICA  109 

diers,  and  dragged  their  mutilated  bodies 
through  the  streets. 

The  emperor  was  in  Italy.  The  report 
of  the  outrage  goaded  him  to  madness. 
He  determined  to  retaliate  without 
form  of  law.  By  his  orders  the  inhab- 
itants of  Thessalonica  were  invited  in 
the  emperor's  name  to  another  race  in 
which  it  is  probable  they  were  given 
to  understand  that  their  favorite  would 
reappear.  They  crowded  the  Hippo- 
drome. Old  men  and  young,  women 
and  children,  rich  and  poor,  packed  the 
tiers  of  the  immense  inclosure.  But  they 
saw  no  chariots.  While  they  waited  the 
gates  were  shut.  A  flourish  of  trum- 
pets. The  spectators  leaned  forward  at 
the  signal,  expecting  to  see  their  favorite. 
A  very  different  sight  met  their  view. 
Archers  and  spearsmen  who  had  been 
concealed  beneath  the  tiers  marched  into 
the  arena.  Shooting  their  arrows  and 
hurling  their  spears  into  the  dense  masses 


no  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

of  spectators,  they  began  an  indiscrimi- 
nate massacre.  They  had  been  ordered 
to  spare  no  one.  They  obeyed  their 
orders.  For  more  than  three  hours  the 
slaughter  continued.  Foreigners  and 
visitors  were  cut  down  with  the  rest. 

A  wealthy  merchant  from  abroad  who 
was  present  with  his  two  sons  offered  all 
his  possession  for  the  life  of  one  of  them. 
The  offer  was  accepted.  While  the  fa- 
ther deliberated  which  son  he  should 
save,  the  soldiers  plunged  their  daggers 
into  the  hearts  of  both  and  then  slew 
their  parent.  More  than  seven  thou- 
sand—  some  authorities  say  fifteen  — 
were  slain.  The  guilt  of  the  emperor 
who  allowed  and  almost  certainly  planned 
the  details  of  this  horror  was  more  atro- 
cious because  Thessalonica  had  been  his 
home,  the  victims  of  his  vengeance  had 
been  his  neighbors  and  his  friends.  Yet 
perhaps  no  single  act  since  the  Cruci- 
fixion has  been  overruled  to  the  accom- 


THESSALONICA  m 

plishment  of  so  much  good  by  impress- 
ing upon  the  world  the  spirit  of  Christ 
as  this  diabolical  crime. 

For  this  deed  the  world  saw  Caesar 
himself  excommunicated,  compelled  to 
do  eight  months'  penance,  and  even  then 
refused  the  Sacrament  until,  stripped 
of  every  emblem  of  power,  he  had 
lain  all  night  upon  the  stones  before 
the  altar  of  Milan  Cathedral  begging 
forgiveness  from  Him  "who  came  to 
save  men's  lives."  The  sight  of  the 
"foremost  man  in  all  this  world,*'  the 
man  who  had  power  by  a  word  to 
kill  or  to  spare  whom  he  would  of  a 
hundred  million  subjects,  lying  abject 
as  the  poorest  beggar  because  he  had 
broken  a  command  of  Christ,  probably 
impressed  upon  mankind  the  meaning 
and  the  power  of  Christianity  as  they 
had  never  been  felt  before.  It  was  the 
longest  single  leap  toward  true  demo- 
cracy ever  made. 


112  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

Those  sufferers  of  Thessalonica  did 
not  die  in  vain. 

V.  Thessalonica  is  still,  as  I  have 
said,  after  the  capital,  the  most  impor- 
tant city  of  European  Turkey.  Many  of 
her  wealthiest  citizens,  though  Moslems 
in  faith,  are  of  Jewish  descent,  and  their 
history  adds  another  to  the  mournful 
memories  of  their  home.  Their  ances- 
tors were  not  the  men  who  persecuted 
Paul,  but  were  themselves  victims  of  a 
persecution  unique  in  its  atrocity. 

In  1492,  while  Columbus  was  seek- 
ing a  new  world,  a  decree  of  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella  condemned  to  death  all 
unbaptized  Jews  found  after  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  days  in  their  domin- 
ions. For  centuries  Spain  had  been  their 
home.  They  had  created  most  of  her 
wealth.  One  of  them  offered  an  enor- 
mous sum  to  relieve  her  finances,  which 
were  greatly  embarrassed,  if  the  monarchs 
would  adopt  milder  measures.    While 


THESSALONICA  113 

they  hesitated  between  cupidity  and  what 
they  deemed  their  duty,  Torquemada 
entered  their  presence,  and  holding  a 
crucifix  before  them  exclaimed,  "Judas 
sold  his  Master  for  thirty  pieces  of 
silver.  Sell  Him  again  for  a  higher  price 
and  give  to  God  an  account  of  your 
bargain." 

That  decided  the  wavering  sovereigns. 
The  Jews  were  driven  out.  Robbed  of 
all  they  possessed,  they  knew  not  whither 
to  fly.  Portugal  was,  if  possible,  more 
cruel  than  Spain.  King  Manuel's  decree 
required  all  Jewish  children  under  four 
years  to  be  taken  from  their  parents  and 
placed  under  Christian  training,  while 
every  Israelite  above  that  age  was  driven 
from  the  kingdom.  Mothers  threw  their 
offspring  into  the  rivers  or  slew  them 
with  their  own  hands,  to  save  them  from 
what  they  thought  eternal  death.  Do- 
minican preachers  proclaimed  that  the 
pains  of  purgatory  would  be  limited  to 


114  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

a  hundred  days  for  every  Christian  who 
killed  a  Jew. 

Like  their  father  from  Ur,  the  de- 
spoiled victims  of  theological  frenzy  went 
forth  not  knowing  whither  they  should 
go.  But  they  were  true  to  their  faith. 
A  shipload  of  the  exiles,  wrecked  upon 
the  Barbary  coast,  escaped  starvation  by 
eating  the  grass  that  grew  wild  upon  the 
shore.  Though  suffering  the  pangs  of 
hunger,  they  would  not  at  first  touch  a 
blade  because  it  was  the  Sabbath,  and 
their  law  forbade  the  plucking  of  corn 
upon  that  day.  But  when  their  rabbi 
explained  that  there  was  no  law  against 
cropping  as  the  beasts  do,  the  ravenous 
zealots  threw  themselves  upon  their  faces, 
and  keeping  their  hands  behind  them, 
seized  the  green  blades  with  their  teeth. 

Many  of  the  exiles  perished.  Many 
were  enslaved  at  the  ports  where  they 
sought  refuge.  A  considerable  number 
fled  to  Thessalonica.    Here  they  were 


THESSALONICA  115 

treated  with  a  humanity  that  met  them 
nowhere  else.  Kind  treatment  in  time 
melted  away  the  zeal  which  persecution 
had  intensified  as  icebergs  are  melted 
when  they  drift  into  tropic  seas ;  and 
the  descendants  of  the  Spanish  refugees 
gradually  adopted  the  faith  of  their  bene- 
factors. 

Of  all  the  cities  mentioned  in  the  New 
Testament,  Thessalonica  is  the  most 
striking  illustration  of  the  Master's 
words,  "  Blessed  are  they  that  mourn." 
No  other  of  them  all  has  suffered  so 
much,  yet  she  is  the  only  one  which 
holds  to-day  a  position  of  relative  im- 
portance equal  to  that  she  occupied  when 
the  words  were  spoken. 


OLD   CORINTH 

THE   CITY   OF  THE   ATHLETES 

The  Acropolis  or  Citadel  of  Athens  was 
a  quadrangular  mass  of  rock  rising  a 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  sheer  on  every 
side  except  the  west.  The  length  of  its 
leveled  top,  a  thousand  feet  from  east  to 
west,  measured  twice  the  width.  Midway 
upon  the  northern  verge  the  Ectheum, 
a  temple  to  Athena,  presented  the  most 
faultless  specimen  of  Ionic  grace  the 
world  has  seen.  Directly  opposite,  upon 
the  southern  verge,  and  dedicated  to  the 
same  divinity,  the  Parthenon  embodied 
the  supreme  achievement  of  Doric  art. 

Both  buildings  fronted  the  rising  sun. 
The  space  between  them  was,  as  the 
whole  of  the  Acropolis,  covered  thickly 
with  statues  so  lovely  that  a  torso  or 


OLD   CORINTH  117 

even  an  arm  from  one  of  them  is  counted 
a  treasure  in  modern  museums. 

Raised  by  a  lofty  pedestal  above  this 
forest  of  sculpture,  midway  between  her 
two  temples,  and  towering  above  them, 
seventy  feet  in  height,  cast  by  Phidias 
from  the  spoils  of  Marathon,  facing  west- 
ward to  overlook  the  city  that  trusted  in 
her  care,  armed  with  helmet,  shield,  and 
spear  to  protect  its  people,  stood  the 
bronze  colossus  of  Athena,  the  goddess 
of  the  mind. 

Fifty-six  miles  to  the  west  and  plainly 
visible  through  the  clear  air  of  Greece, 
was  the  Acrocorinthus,  or  Citadel  of 
Corinth. 

Upon  its  crest,  dominating  that  city 
as  Athena  dominated  Athens,  stood  the 
temple  and  statue  of  Aphrodite,  the 
goddess  of  the  body. 

The  deity  of  Athens  glancing  scorn- 
fully at  the  deity  of  Corinth  seemed  to 
'  Wright's  Ancient  Cities,  p.  155. 


ii8  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

say,  "  Seek  first  the  powers  of  the  intel- 
lect as  my  Athenians  do,  and  all  things 
needful  shall  be  added  unto  you." 

The  deity  of  Corinth,  flashing  back 
the  scornful  glance  in  sunny  smiles, 
seemed  to  reply,  "  Seek  first  the  plea- 
sures of  the  body  —  what  ye  shall  eat 
and  what  ye  shall  drink  and  wherewithal 
ye  shall  be  clothed  —  and  all  things 
needful  shall  be  yours." 

Athens,  loyal  to  her  creed  as  the 
magnet  to  the  pole,  ended  in  midnight 
darkness,  but  left  for  her  memorial  a 
cluster  of  names,  poets,  philosophers, 
orators,  and  artists,  unapproached  for 
brilliancy  in  the  annals  of  our  race. 

Corinth,  no  less  loyal  to  her  creed, 
ended  in  ruin  still  more  complete,  and 
left  as  her  legacy  only  a  shameful  night 
unstarred  by  the  name  of  a  poet  or  phi- 
losopher, scarcely  of  an  artist  or  an  ora- 
tor, bright  enough  to  hold  the  attention 
of    mankind;    and — what   Americans 


OLD   CORINTH  119 

cannot  afford  to  forget  —  though  she 
was  the  wealthiest  city  of  Greece,  peo- 
pled by  merchant  princes  more  magnifi- 
cent than  Tyre  ever  saw,  the  only  one 
of  her  citizens  whose  name  is  still  fami- 
liar was  that  penniless  genius  who  had 
not  where  to  lay  his  head,  and  yet  when 
the  emperor  of  the  world  asked  him 
"  What  can  I  do  for  you  ? "  was  said 
to  have  replied,  "  You  can  get  out  of 
my  sunlight.** 

The  histories  of  Athens  and  of  Cor- 
inth declare  that  intellectual  power  and 
material  prosperity  are  alike  unable  to 
preserve  communities  which  do  not 
obey  the  voice  which  said  to  them,  as  it 
said  to  Jerusalem,  "  Seek  first  right- 
eousness, and  all  things  needful  shall  be 
added  unto  you/* 

The  fate  of  Athens  I  have  traced  in 
another  paper.'    The  ruin  of  old  Corinth 
was  more  sudden  and  complete. 
'  Ancient  Cities, 


120  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

The  Mediterranean,  gnawing  out  from 
the  west  the  long  and  narrow  Gulf  of 
Corinth,  and  from  the  southeast  the 
broader  and  shorter  Saronic  Gulf,  has 
nearly  bitten  Greece  in  two.  Between 
these  gulfs  a  bar  of  rock  three  miles  thick 
holds  its  almost  severed  parts  together. 
The  slight  vessels  of  antiquity,  placed 
on  frames  with  wooden  rollers,  were 
drawn  across  the  narrow  bar,  and  for  this 
reason  it  was  named  "the  place  over 
which  things  go,"  or  in  Greek,  "  the 
isthmus."  Nature  marked  the  spot  for 
a  commercial  centre.  While  commerce 
was  confined  almost  wholly  to  the  Medi- 
terranean, the  "  isthmus  "  was  relatively 
more  important  than  is  Suez  or  Panama 
to-day. 

Eight  miles  west  of  its  narrowest  part 
the  isthmus  broadens  to  six  miles. 
There  stood  Corinth.  It  was  older  than 
Sparta,3@erlhan  Athfins^  To  picture  its 
appearance  think   of  a  heavily,  puffily 


OLD   CORINTH  121 

upholstered  chair  with  a  very  high  back, 
a  very  low  seat,  and  no  arms,  so  placed 
as  to  face  a  little  east  of  north.  The 
back  is  a  huge  crag^^  rising,  not  sheer 
_but  steep,  more  than  eighteen  hundred 
feet.  The  seat  is  a  gently  sloping  mass 
— ^f  rock  thrust  from  the  crag  two  hun- 
dred feet  above  its  base.  Upon  this  seat 
the  city  rested,  and  its  walls,  includ- 
ing back  of  crag  and  seat  of  rock,  were 
about  ten  miles  in  circuit.  Upon  the 
summit  of  the  crag  which  formed  the 
Acrocorinthus  rested  a  dainty  temple  of 
Aphrodite.  Near  it,  probably  within  the 
temple  precincts,  a  spring  of  water  named 
Peirene  formed,  with  Siloa  and  Castalia, 
one  of  the  three  most  celebrated  foun- 
tains the  world  has  known.  The  entire 
water  supply  of  the  city  till  the  time  of 
Hadrian  came  from  this  mountainous 
crag.  Its  waters  were  artificially  con- 
ducted to  three  different  reservoirs,  each 
inclosed  and  roofed  with  marble,  and 


122  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

probably  bearing  at  one  or  another  time 
the  name  "  Peirene."  Two  of  these 
have  been  located  by  Professor  Rich- 
ardson. 

Hadrian  supplied  a  fourth  reservoir 
from  a  more  distant  source,  and  placed 
upon  its  brink  a  winged  horse  of  bronze 
pouring  the  stream  through  an  uplifted 
ivory  hoof.  The  significance  of  this  de- 
vice we  shall  presently  consider. 

The  entire  crag  or  mountain  was  ter- 
raced and  planted  with  trees  and  flowers, 
so  that  viewed  from  the  north  it  re- 
sembled an  immense  bouquet,  out  of 
which  peered  statues  in  marble  and 
bronze,  marking  the  winding  road  that 
led  to  the  temple  on  its  summit.  A 
broad  way  running  north  between  mili- 
tary walls  joined  the  city  with  Lechaeum, 
its  harbor  on  the  Corinthian  Gulf;  and  a 
second  spacious  avenue  to  the  southeast, 
bordered  by  pine  groves,  thick  set  with 
stately  mausoleums  and  statues  of  the 


OLD   CORINTH  123 

dead,  conducted  to  Cenchreae,  the  harbor 
on  the  Saronic  Gulf.  Tombs  of  men 
honored  in  their  day  abounded  here,  but 
the  only  personalities  which  gave  it  a  dis- 
tinction, still  remembered,  were  two  for- 
eigners, —  the  pauper  Diogenes,  already 
mentioned,  who,  though  he  drank  water 
only,  lived  in  an  empty  wine  cask  at  one 
end  of  the  avenue,  and  a  workingman,  a 
tent-maker,  who  passed  some  months  at 
the  other. 

The  harbor  of  Cenchreae  lay  between 
two  rocky  promontories,  each  of  which 
was  crowned  by  a  temple.  A  colossal 
bronze  of  the  Greek  Neptune,  holding 
in  one  hand  a  trident  and  in  the  other 
a  dolphin,  rose  from  the  water  between 
them.  At  Cenchreas  lived  the  lady  Phoebe, 
who  carried  from  Corinth  the  Epistle  to 
the  Romans.  But  what  gave  earliest  and 
widest  celebrity  to  Corinth  remains  to 
be  told. 

We  are  sitting  in  the  armless  chair, 


124  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

facing  nearly  north,  the  Temple  of  Venus, 
like  a  finial  ornament,  high  overhead. 
Extending  the  left  hand  a  mile  and  a 
half  before  us,  we  dip  our  fingers  at  Le- 
chaeum  in  the  Corinthian  Gulf.  Reach- 
ing the  right  arm  seven  miles  southeast, 
we  shake  hands  with  Phoebe  at  Cen- 
chreae.  Turn  your  head  halfway  to  the 
right  and  note  what  is  between  your 
arms. 

From  gulf  to  gulf,  eight  miles  away, 
curves  the  boundary.  It  is  a  military 
wall  built  to  keep  Xerxes  out  of  south- 
ern Greece,  and  called  "  The  Isthmian." 
Just  inside  it  is  the  great  Temple  of 
Neptune,  and  near  the  latter  the  build- 
ings used  for  the  Isthmian  games.  The 
avenue  leading  to  it  is  fringed  on  one 
side  by  a  row  of  pine  trees,  on  the  other 
by  a  row  of  statues  facing  them.  These 
grow  longer  every  two  years,  for  they 
are  memorials  of  the  victors  in  the  bien- 
nial competitions.    Next  to  having  his 


OLD   CORINTH  125 

statue  placed  at  Olympia,  the  highest 
ambition  of  a  Greek  youth  is  to  have  it 
here.  If  he  wins  the  prize  at  Olympia 
in  running,  boxing,  wrestling,  poetry,  or 
music,  his  native  city  will  proclaim  a 
holiday  to  welcome  him  home.  A  breach 
will  be  made  in  its  walls  for  him  to  enter, 
and  when  he  has  passed  through  it  will 
be  closed,  that  none  less  worthy  may 
tread  in  his  steps.  Though  he  will  hence- 
forth belong  to  the  highest  aristocracy 
of  his  country,  his  most  valued  reward 
will  be  the  knowledge  that  his  statue 
stands  in  the  sacred  grove  of  Olympia. 
Second  only  to  this  was  the  glory  of  the 
victor  at  Isthmia. 

The  history  of  Corinth  shows  no  less 
vividly  than  the  history  of  Israel  the 
efforts  of  the  unseen  powers  to  save  a 
community  from  its  peculiar  dangers, 
and  the  appalling  obstinacy  with  which 
those  efforts  may  be  resisted.  Before 
our  Scriptures  had  been  written  Corinth 


126  CITIES   OF  PAUL 

received  her  bible.  In  form  it  was  un- 
like ours ;  in  substance  it  was  similar. 
How  it  was  given,  when  or  through 
whom,  no  one  knows.  But  it  was  there, 
and  it  was  adapted  more  accurately  than 
our  Bible  to  the  needs  and  conditions 
of  her  people.  Its  chapters  were  painted 
in  pictures  or  carved  in  statues  which 
all  men  saw,  and  sung  in  hymns  which 
all  men  heard.  By  such  means  its  con- 
tents were  made  more  familiar  to  the 
inhabitants  of  Corinth  than  are  the  con- 
tents of  our  Scriptures  to  the  people 
of  Christendom.  It  warned  them  with 
tremendous  power  to  cast  off  the  sins 
they  cherished,  and  exhorted  them  with 
equal  urgency  to  cherish  the  virtues 
they  rejected. 

The  temptations  of  Corinth  were 
those  which  assail  with  special  force 
commercial  peoples.  All  her  wealth,  and 
she  was  the  wealthiest  of  Greek  cities, 
came  from  commerce.    Merchants  were 


OLD   CORINTH  127 

her  princes.    As   in   America,  business 
men  were  her  sovereigns. 

The  first  chapter  in  her  bible,  as  fa- 
miliar to  all  her  children  as  the  history 
of  Joseph  is  to  those  in  our  Sunday- 
schools,  told  the  story  of  Jason.  When 
Corinth  was  young,  Jason  was  sent  on 
a  divine  business.  It  was  the  business 
of  all  merchants.  Somewhere,  behind 
barriers  almost  insuperable,  hung  a 
golden  fleece.  In  spite  of  all  obstacles 
he  must  get  that  fleece  in  an  honorable 
way  and  use  it  as  the  gods  should  di- 
rect. He  summoned  the  noblest  men  of 
his  day  to  help  him.  They  came  will- 
ingly. In  the  ship  Argo  they  started 
upon  the  quest.  They  fought  dragons 
and  conquered  them.  They  battled  with 
hunger  and  heat  and  cold  and  conquered 
them.  Their  struggles  and  well-earned 
victories  made  them  the  worthiest  and 
strongest  of  the  Greeks ;  made  them 
the   world's   heroes.    Then    Jason   re- 


128  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

tired  to  Corinth.  He  did  not  under- 
stand that  he  had  been  sent  after  the 
fleece  that  his  struggles  might  make  him 
a  hero.  He  thought  only  of  the  gold 
he  had  won.  Having  gained  that,  he 
laid  up  the  good  ship  and  left  it  to  rot. 
in  the  pine  grove  at  Corinth,  wasted  ten 
years  of  sovereignty  in  selfish  luxury, 
growing  baser  every  year,  and  became 
false  to  his  wife,  who  in  revenge  mur- 
dered his  children.  Sinking  into  deeper 
and  deeper  degradation,  the  hero's  life 
ended  in  the  sternest  tragedy  of  Greek 
mythology.  "  So  must  it  be  with  every 
one  who  fancies  that  his  business  is  to 
get  money  without  discerning  that  his 
real  business  is  to  make  sure  his  strug- 
gles after  money  hammer  and  carve  him 
into  a  man,'*  said  this  chapter. 

The  second  chapter,  painted  in  many 
pictures,  one  of  them  by  Polignotus  so 
fine  that  it  was  placed  beside  the  shrine 
of  the  oracle  at   Delphi,  described   in 


OLD   CORINTH  129 

hymns  which  were  sung  in  the  sanctua- 
ries of  Corinth  as  the  psalms  of  David 
were  sung  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem, 
exhibited  another  king  of  Corinth.  He 
stands  in  a  lake,  but  when  he  stoops  to 
drink,  the  water  flies  from  his  lips. 
Luscious  fruits  hang  over  him,  but  when 
he  lifts  his  hand  to  pluck  them,  the 
boughs  spring  upward  beyond  his  reach. 
He  is  tortured  by  thirst  and  hunger, 
but  he  cannot  die.  But  why  is  Tanta- 
lus tormented  thus  ?  He  had  been  in- 
trusted with  a  treasure  of  gold  —  observe, 
it  is  always  gold  that  seduces  in  these 
Corinthian  lessons  —  and  bidden  to 
guard  it  for  Zeus.  But  he  coveted  the 
gold,  kept  it  for  himself,  lied  about  it, 
when  required  to  restore  it  declared  he 
did  not  have  it.  He  fancied  the  treasure 
could  satisfy  his  desires,  but  found  that 
it  aggravated  them.  "  The  first  million, 
which  was  to  be  more  than  enough, 
served  only  to  triple  the  craving  for  the 


130  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

second  million,  and  so  on  and  on  with 
every  one  who  grows  careless  of  his 
work  in  thinking  of  his  wages,"  says 
this  chapter.  Who  wrote  it  ?  I  cannot 
conceive  unless  it  were  He  who  said, 
"  Blessed  are  they  that  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness :  for  they  shall  be 
filled." 

The  third  chapter  is  an  extract  from 
the  biography  of  another  king  of  Cor- 
inth. 

"Up  the  high  hill  he  heaves  a  huge  round  stone.*' 

But  when  he  has  almost  reached  the 
top  it  slips  by  him,  darts  swiftly  down, 
and  the  weary  man  must  begin  his  task 
anew.  And  who  is  this  ?  "  Sisyphus  !  " 
every  child  in  Corinth  would  have  an- 
swered. "  He  used  to  cheat  the  mer- 
chants who  came  here  to  trade.  Some 
say  he  rolled  stones  down  the  Citadel 
upon  them  and  then  stole  their  money 
from  the  mangled   bodies,  and  now  he 


OLD   CORINTH  131 

has  to  roll  stones  forever,  though  no 
longer  down  hill."  But  many  a  modern 
man  who  has  spent  his  life  cornering 
the  markets  and  ended  in  the  poor- 
house  has  felt,  "  It  is  I,  it  is  I !  " 

The  caption  of  the  fourth  chapter  I 
have  already  shown.  It  was  written  by 
the  Emperor  Hadrian  and  placed  where 
every  eye  could  read  it. 

In  1896  Professor  R.  B.  Richardson 
while  excavating  found  a  large  number 
of  small  images  of  horses  and  horses' 
heads.  They  helped  him  to  locate  the 
great  temple  the  foundations  of  which 
he  discovered,  for  he  knew  they  were  vo- 
tive offerings.  These  offerings  brought 
to  the  sanctuary  by  devout  Corinthians 
more  than  two  millenniums  ago  were  to 
them  in  a  way  what  hymn  and  prayer 
books  are  to  us.  They  testify  that  the 
story  of  the  horse  was  rooted  in  the 
minds  of  those  worshipers  as  deeply  as 
the   memory  of  the  Madonna  in    the 


132  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

mind  of  mediaeval  Europe.  And  this 
is  made  still  more  apparent  by  the  fact 
that  when  the  city  had  been  completely 
destroyed  and  its  site  had  remained  for 
more  than  a  century  a  desert,  two  hun- 
dred years  after  Julius  Caesar  rebuilt  it 
Hadrian  found  the  legend  of  the  horse 
still  so  familiar  that  he  placed  at  the 
new  reservoir  a  bronze  of  the  winged 
steed  delivering  the  stream  from  an  up- 
lifted ivory  hoof;  for  he  knew  that  all 
in  the  city  would  understand  its  signifi- 
cance and  hear  it  calling  "  Ho,  every 
one  that  thirsteth  !  " 

This  is  the  story  written  in  those  clay 
hymnals,  stamped  on  the  coins,  repeated 
in  pictures,  statues,  poems  before  the 
eyes  and  in  the  ears  of  Corinth  for  cen- 
turies, and  finally  cast  in  bronze  by 
Hadrian. 

A  monster  breathing  fire  and  devour- 
ing men  ravaged  a  distant  land.  No  one 
could  stand  before  it,  for  scales  of  brass 


OLD   CORINTH  133 

covered  its  body  and  granite  was  as 
butter  in  its  claws.  At  last  a  prince 
of  Corinth,  —  Bellerophon  by  name,  — 
moved  with  compassion  for  the  afflicted 
land,  watched  at  night  by  the  spring  of 
Peirene.  In  his  hand  was  a  bridle.  No- 
tice the  material ;  it  is  gold  this  time  also, 
but  gold  used  as  it  should  be.  While 
men  slept  —  it  is  the  watchers  only  who 
see  such  things  —  the  winged  courser  of 
Zeus  descended  light  as  a  snowflake  to 
drink  at  the  holy  fountain.  The  prince 
laid  his  hand  upon  the  steed,  put  the 
gold  bridle  on  its  head,  and  guiding  by 
that  was  carried  swift  as  thought  to  the 
land  where  the  Chimaera  lay.  Hovering 
over  it  he  slew  the  monster  with  arrows 
shot  from  above.  Mind  you,  only  by 
weapons  sent  from  that  direction  can 
such  creatures  be  killed. 

Thus  by  the  sight  of  their  ideal  hero, 
whenever  at  market  they  glanced  at 
coins  on  which  his  image  was  stamped. 


134  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

or  walked  the  streets,  or  entered  the 
theatre,  no  less  than  when  they  went  to 
church,  the  Corinthians  were  warned  to 
use  their  wealth  in  such  wise  that  it 
should  guide  aright  the  celestial  coursers 
—  the  noble  aspirations,  the  generous 
impulses  —  sent  from  heaven  to  slay 
the  beasts  that  devour  men.  Thus  "  Go 
ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  gos- 
pel to  every  creature  '*  was  stamped  upon 
the  coins  with  which  they  bought  their 
daily  bread.  But  their  history  shows  that 
wherever  they  sent  one  angel  they  sent 
seven  fiends,  with  every  Bible  as  it  were 
a  cargo  of  whiskey,  so  that  in  Paul's  age 
"  to  Corinthianize  "  meant  in  all  lan- 
guages that  used  the  word  "  to  go  to  the 
devil." 

For  the  people  of  Corinth  heeded 
their  bible  about  as  much  as  we  heed 
ours  —  no  more,  no  less.  Two  facts  will 
make  this  plain. 

I.  Their  riches  came  from  the  sea.    It 


OLD    CORINTH  135 

was  natural,  therefore,  that  they  should 
worship  the  god  of  the  ocean.  At  first 
they  did  so.  Their  oldest  temple  was 
built  to  Neptune.  But  they  turned  from 
the  manly  god  who  taught  them  to 
earn  wealth  to  the  flattering  goddess 
who  taught  them  to  squander  it,  first 
in  luxury,  next  in  folly,  and  last  in 
unspeakable  debauchery.  The  Temple 
of  Neptune  remained  at  the  base,  but 
the  Temple  of  Venus  they  put  upon 
the  summit  of  their  citadel.  There  it 
advertised  to  all  men  that  religion  of 
sumptuous  and  sickening  depravity  for 
which  Corinth  became  chiefly  celebrated. 
That  cult  was  the  most  conspicuous 
characteristic  of  the  place,  and  from  it 
the  title  of  this  paper  should  be  taken 
if  it  were  possible  to  make  any  truthful 
description  of  that  characteristic  fit  for 
modern  eyes. 

II.  How   old    Corinth    obeyed    her 
bible    is  also  shown    by  the   Isthmian 


136  CITIES    OF  PAUL 

games,  though  their  history  was  not 
completed  until  she  had  been  destroyed, 
rebuilt,  and  made  the  "  City  of  Par- 
venus.** 

Those  games  were  at  first  religious 
rites.  He  who  taught  Paul  that  men's 
bodies  were  temples  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
had  long  before  revealed  the  same  fact 
to  Corinth.  The  piety  and  genius  of 
Greece  founded  and  fostered,  in  honor 
of  the  gods,  these  competitions  which 
strengthened  both  body  and  mind. 
Only  honorable  men  were  permitted  to 
enter  them.  That  stadium  hard  by  the 
Temple  of  Neptune  was  built  by  those 
who  in  contributing  to  its  cost  felt  as 
we  feel  when  we  help  to  build  a  church. 
That  row  of  marble  cottages  for  the 
athletes  and  the  magnificent  gymnasium 
for  their  practice  were  erected  by  the 
same  kind  of  devotion  which  erected  the 
Minster  of  Cologne  and  the  Church  of 
St.  Peter. 


OLD    CORINTH  137 

Thirty  days  before  the  games  began 
each  applicant  for  the  contests  was  re- 
quired to  appear  before  a  court  of  judges 
chosen  from  the  noblest  in  the  nation, 
and,  after  sacrifices  to  the  gods,  make 
oath  that  he  was  of  pure  Greek  lineage ; 
that  he  had  never  committed  an  act  of 
impiety  ;  that  he  had  never  been  con- 
victed of  a  crime,  and  that  he  had 
trained  faithfully  ten  months  for  the 
event.  For  thirty  days  more  he  must 
train  in  the  Isthmian  gymnasium,  under 
the  eye  of  the  president,  an  official  hon- 
ored more  highly  than  is  the  president 
of  any  university  in  our  country. 

The  eventful  day  arrives.  The  foot 
race  is  called.  "  They  that  run  in  a  race 
run  all,  but  one  receiveth  the  prize." 
And  what  is  the  prize  ?  A  crown  of 
parsley  leaves,  in  later  years  of  pine,  but 
never  a  penny  of  money.  His  prize  is 
the  green  crown  testifying  that  its  wearer 
has  won  honor  for  his  native  city,  and 


138  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

telling  him  that  his  name  will  be  sung 
by  poets  and  his  statue  placed  among 
those  of  the  renowned. 

While  these  remained  the  sole  re- 
wards, kings  sought  admission  to  the 
contests  and  the  best  men  in  Greece  re- 
garded the  race-course  and  the  boxing- 
ring  as  Paul  regarded  that  high  career 
which  he  described  by  reference  to  them. 

But  a  change  came.  Neither  money 
nor  anything  that  had  a  money  value 
was  contended  for  at  the  Isthmian  games. 
Their  popularity,  however,  became  so 
great  that  they  were  imitated  throughout 
Asia  Minor.  The  Isthmian  victors  were 
sought  for  as  coaches.  Great  sums  were 
given  them  for  service  in  that  capacity. 
They  yielded  to  the  temptation  which 
conquered  Jason,  Tantalus,  and  Sisy- 
phus. Victory  at  Isthmia  was  sought 
as  a  lever  with  which  to  raise  money  at 
Ephesus  and  Antioch.  Then  the  glory 
of  Greek  athletics   passed  into   eclipse. 


OLD    CORINTH  139 

Then  came  the  period  when  the  wise 
and  the  good  regarded  them  as  we  regard 
the  prize-ring,  and  when,  glancing  at 
Corinth,  they  scarcely  knew  whether  they 
most  despised  its  bullies  striking  with 
brass  knuckles  in  the  arena  or  its  Syba- 
rites dancing  with  tinkling  cymbals  in 
the  courts  of  Aphrodite. 


VI 
NEW  CORINTH 

THE  CITY  OF  THE  PARVENUS 

The  year  146  b.  c.  was  blackened  by- 
two  of  the  foulest  deeds  Rome  ever  per- 
petrated. Both  of  them  were  wrought 
by  cupidity  masking  as  patriotism.  The 
patriotism  was  of  that  kind  which  Dr. 
Johnston  branded  as  the  last  refuge  of 
scoundrels. 

Carthage  had  been  the  rival  of  Rome. 
She  was  that  no  longer.  Her  navy  de- 
stroyed, her  army  effaced,  her  condition 
was  such  that  Cato's  apprehensions  of  a 
second  Hannibal  had  excited  smiles  in 
the  Senate.  But  the  merchants  and  bank- 
ers whom  Cato  despised  brought  about 
what  his  efforts  failed  to  accomplish. 
Envious  of  her  wealth  and  jealous  of  her 
commercial  superiority,  they  persuaded 


NEW   CORINTH  141 

the  Conscript  Fathers  that  Carthage 
should  be  exterminated.  Sorely  against 
his  will  Scipio  was  forced  to  destroy  her. 
After  a  defense  as  heroic  as  it  was  hope- 
less, the  splendid  metropolis  of  Africa 
ceased  to  exist.  Neither  wall  nor  build- 
ing was  left  to  mark  its  site. 

"  Scipio,  however,  whom  nature  had 
designed  for  a  nobler  part  than  that  of 
an  executioner,  gazed  with  horror  on  his 
own  work ;  and  instead  of  the  joy  of 
victory  the  victor  himself  was  haunted 
by  a  presentiment  of  the  retribution  that 
would  inevitably  follow  such  a  mis- 
deed." ' 

Upon  Corinth  that  same  year  Rome 
committed  a  deed  no  less  vile.  That  city 
also  was  a  competitor,  feared  by  the 
would-be  monopolists  of  the  Tiber,  and 
their  machinations  eventuated  in  her  ruin. 
It  was  as  if  England  should  grow  strong 
enough  and  wicked  enough  to  blot  out 
*  Mommsen. 


142  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

Hamburg  and  New  York  in  order  to 
appropriate  their  trade. 

*«  The  mills  of  God  grind  slowly. 
But  they  grind  exceeding  small." 

These  two  iniquities,  which,  when  un- 
dertaken, seemed  to  the  majority  expe- 
dient, are  conspicuous  among  the  causes 
of  the  "  decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire." 

It  was  the  absence  from  North  Africa 
of  a  strong  civilized  power  which  en- 
abled the  Vandals  to  establish  themselves 
there,  from  that  base  to  storm  and  pil- 
lage the  Seven  Hills  and  open  the  door 
for  the  Ostrogoths.  Had  Rome  dealt 
honorably  with  Carthage,  there  would  in 
all  human  probability  have  been  such  a 
power  when  it  was  sorely  needed.  Gen- 
seric  and  Theodoric  were  the  divine  re- 
ply to  Scipio  i^milianus,  long  delayed 
but  convincing  when  it  came. 

Yet  Rome  was  not  killed  by  spears. 


NEW   CORINTH  143 

She  died  of  the  plague.  The  seeds  of  it 
were  brought  by  her  victorious  soldiers 
from  Corinth  and  scattered  over  the 
whole  of  Italy.  Great  Rome  murdered 
little  Corinth  easily  by  a  single  blow,  but 
in  dealing  the  blow  she  caught  from  her 
victim  the  disease  which  killed  her.  It 
would  have  been  well  for  her  had  she 
remembered  where  it  was  that  Ulysses 
went  to  get  poison  for  his  arrows. 

Before  b.  c.  146  Athens  had  died, 
Sparta  had  died,  Thebes  had  died  ;  that 
is,  if  death  is  the  flight  of  the  spirit  from 
the  body.  Each  of  these  cities  left  a 
legacy  of  splendid  deeds.  The  body  of 
Corinth,  like  the  others,  still  lingered. 
If  accumulating  money  and  using  it  so 
as  to  make  the  whole  earth  a  pander  to 
guilty  passions  while  piety  and  patriot- 
ism steadily  decay  be  prosperity,  she  was 
prosperous.  If  to  fester  with  a  moral 
leprosy  so  conspicuous  that  when  any 
man  in  any  nation  between  Spain  and 


144  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  Euphrates  becomes  eminent  as  a 
cheat  or  a  debaucher  his  neighbors  say 
"  he  has  Corinthianized,"  be  livings  Cor- 
inth lived  on,  growing  richer  every  year ; 
making  herself  a  coffin  of  gold  studded 
with  jewels,  and  thinking  it  a  throne. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  when  Greece, 
forgetting  the  days  of  her  grandeur,  ca- 
ressed the  ears  of  Midas  as  fondly  as 
Titania  stroked  those  of  Bottom,  she 
put  the  wealthiest  of  her  cities  at  the 
head  of  her  confederacy.  Corinth  had 
money  in  abundance.  What  matter  that 
she  had  little  else  but  vices  ? 

In  proportion  as  men  grow  worthless 
they  generally  grow  arrogant.  So  it 
was  with  Corinth.  Roman  ambassadors 
brought  her  a  message  she  did  not  like. 
Without  considering  that  they  repre- 
sented swords  and  spears  and  shields  and 
veteran  legions  to  which  she  could  op- 
pose only  flowers  and  perfumes  and 
pictures  and  dancing  girls,  she  leered  at 


NEW   CORINTH  145 

them  with  senile  insults  ;  drove  them 
from  the  council  chamber  with  yells  of 
rage  and  flung  filth  of  the  streets  upon 
them.  Rome  rejoiced  when  she  heard 
of  this.  It  brought  the  opportunity  she 
craved.  Her  reply  was  Lucius  Mum- 
miuSjwith  orders  to  destroy  the  city  which 
had  insulted  Roman  ambassadors  (in 
large  letters)  and  diminished  Roman 
trade  (in  very  small  ones,  since  the  sting 
of  the  wasp  is  scarcely  visible  to  the 
naked  eye) .  H  e  did  the  work  thoroughly. 
Temples,  palaces,  gardens  were  de- 
spoiled. All  property,  public  and  private, 
was  confiscated.  A  vast  number  of  ves- 
sels laden  with  treasures  of  art  were  sent 
to  the  Tiber.  The  citizens  were  sold 
into  slavery.  The  walls  were  leveled. 
Every  building  but  one  within  their  cir- 
cuit was  razed.    The  ruins  were  fired. 

The  devastation  continued  until  the 
most  gorgeous  city  in  Greece,  perhaps 
in  the  world,  became  a  heap.    Roman 


146  CITIES    OF  PAUL 

soldiers  tore  from  the  walls  of  temples 
and  palaces  pictures  each  worth  a  prince's 
ransom,  and  flung  them  on  the  ground 
for  dice-boards,  on  which  they  gambled 
for  female  captives.  The  general  ap- 
praised the  spoils  so  accurately  that  he 
issued  orders,  in  all  seriousness,  requir- 
ing captains  of  transports  freighted  with 
pictures  by  Polignotus  and  statues  by 
Phidias  and  Praxiteles  to  replace  every 
object  missed  from  their  cargoes.  In  a 
triumph  more  magnificent  than  Rome 
had  ever  witnessed,  the  treasures  of  Cor- 
inth were  carried  to  the  capital.  The 
Imperial  City  thought  she  had  conquered 
Greece.  The  reverse  was  true.  Greece 
had  begun  to  conquer  her.  The  Hel- 
lenizing  of  Italy  dates  from  the  triumph 
of  Mummius.  The  keenest-eyed  of 
Roman  historians  wrote :  — 

"The  first  result  of  the  victory  of 
Mummius  was  the  death  of  faith  and 
morality  in  Rome." 


NEW   CORINTH  147 

Greek  manners  followed  Greek  wealth, 
Grecian  luxury  supplanted  Roman  sim- 
plicity, Greek  skepticism  drove  out 
Roman  faith,  Greek  vices  corrupted 
Roman  virtues.  Thus  the  incurable 
cancer  of  which  Rome  ultimately  per- 
ished began  its  work.  The  poison  into 
which  the  wise  man  of  Ithaca  had  tried 
to  dip  the  arrows  to  be  aimed  at  his  ene- 
mies was  taken  by  Rpman  fools  to  flavor 
their  daily  food. 

For  a  hundred  years  Corinth  remained 
a  desert.  No  human  creature  dwelt  on 
its  abandoned  site.  The  only  persons  to 
be  seen  where  the  busiest  mart  in  the 
world  had  been  were  paupers  scratching 
the  ground  for  bits  of  Corinthian  brass, 
as  fellahs  and  Arabs  to-day  search  the 
deserted  mounds  beside  the  Nile  and 
the  Euphrates  ;  for  the  burning  of  Cor- 
inth, melting  the  vast  number  of  gold, 
silver,  and  bronze  statues  which  remained 
even  after  Attalus  had  filled  with  them 


148  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

the  galleries  of  Pergamos,  and  Mum- 
mius  had  sent  to  Rome  as  many  of  them 
as  he  had  ships  to  carry,  produced  a  new 
amalgam  named  "  Corinthian  brass," 
which  was  valued  more  highly  than 
gold/ 

A  hundred  years  after  Mummius, 
Julius  Caesar,  alert  to  the  commercial 
opportunities  of  the  location,  founded  a 
second  city  on  the  ancient  site.  He  peo- 
pled it  with  emancipated  slaves.  They 
were  of  various  nationalities  and  diverse 
languages,  but  from  such  unpromising 
material  his  genius  evolved  a  metropolis 
which  reproduced  in  coarser  colors  the 
history  of  its  predecessor.  This  was  the 
city  in  which  Paul  wrote  the  Epistle  to 

»  The  doors  of  the  "  Gate  Beautiful  *'  in  Herod's 
temple  are  said  to  have  been  of  this  material.  It  is 
probable  that  the  stalk  of  that  false  vine  drooping 
with  clusters  of  emeralds  and  rubies,  with  which  our 
Lord  seems  to  have  contrasted  himself  in  speaking 
of  the  **true"  vine  of  which  his  disciples  are  the 
branches,  was  also  of  the  same. 


NEW    CORINTH  149 

the  Romans.  For  obvious  reasons  I  call 
it  "The  City  of  the  Parvenus."  In  ap- 
pearance it  seems  to  have  been  a  repro- 
duction of  ancient  Corinth  so  far  as  a 
stone-mason  can  reproduce  a  statue  by- 
Phidias,  or  a  sign  painter  a  picture  by 
Raphael.  It  copied  the  manners  of  Old 
Corinth  so  far  as  a  washerwoman  sud- 
denly enriched  can  imitate  the  graces  of 
Agnes  Sorel  or  a  bootblack  ape  the  cour- 
tesies of  Chesterfield.  The  morals  of  the 
old  aristocracy  were  more  easily  adopted. 
New  Corinth  may  be  named  —  I  think 
Robertson  called  it  so  —  the  door-mat 
upon  which  foreigners  wiped  their  feet 
before  entering  the  enchanted  land.  De- 
praved as  Greek  manners  became,  they 
remained  always  dainty,  elegant,  refined. 
Gorgeous  as  Roman  manners  became, 
they  never  ceased  to  be  clumsy,  arrogant, 
and  coarse.  The  depravity  of  Greece 
married  the  brutality  of  Rome,  and  their 
offspring  was  New  Corinth.    This  was 


150  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  city  in  which  Paul  spent  eighteen 
months.  The  Judseans  tried  to  drive 
him  from  it  by  violence,  as  he  had  been 
driven  from  Philippi,  but  the  Roman 
governor  suppressed  the  riot,  and  the 
mob  gave  its  leaders  a  drubbing  at  the 
whipping-post.  The  incident  reeks  of 
lynch  law,  as  was  to  be  expected  in  such 
a  place.  At  Corinth  the  Apostle  was  al- 
most mastered  by  a  depression  of  spirits 
which  threatened  to  paralyze  his  useful- 
ness. There  is  little  doubt  that  it  was 
caused  by  the  sight  of  the  depravities 
around  him.  They  made  his  work  seem 
hopeless.  The  appalling  catalogue  of 
vices  in  the  first  chapter  of  Romans  he 
wrote  here.  It  is  only  a  description  of 
what  was  going  on  before  his  eyes. 

And  now  let  us  open  a  few  of  the 
windows  in  the  epistles  to  the  Corin- 
thians, through  which  glimpses  of  the 
city  may  be  seen.  No  other  letter  in 
the  New  Testament  is  so  full  of  local 


NEW    CORINTH  151 

color  as  the  first  of  these.  No  other  is 
so  minutely  adapted  to  the  special  needs 
of  its  original  recipients,  yet  it  is  the  only 
one  addressed  to  "  all  that  call  upon  the 
name  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  every 
place,"  and  more  than  all  of  PauFs  other 
epistles  combined,  it  has  served  as  a 
church  manual  in  all  times  and  regions. 

I.  Some  of  the  allusions  by  which  the 
Apostle  describes  his  own  work  and  feel- 
ings :  — 

The  two  strands  binding  the  new 
city  to  the  old  one  were  the  Isthmian 
games  and  the  Venus  cult.  Through  all 
vicissitudes  except  during  the  century 
of  its  complete  desolation,  when  they 
were  held  a  few  miles  away,  the  Isthmian 
games  continued  at  Corinth.  Therefore 
Paul  was  sure  to  be  understood  by  the 
Corinthians  when  he  wrote  them  that 
he  was  a  boxer,  not  beating  the  air,  but 
hitting  straight  from  the  shoulder  as  the 
Isthmian  athletes  did  ;  a  runner,  running 


152  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

as  the  Isthmian  athletes  ran.  He  de- 
clared that  he  disciplined  himself  as  the 
Isthmian  athletes  had  to  do  before  they 
could  be  admitted  to  the  competitions, 
lest  while  he  preached  to  others  he 
should  become  a  "cast-away,"  which 
was  the  technical  term  for  one  who 
failed  to  pass  the  Isthmian  examinations. 
Again,  at  Isthmia  Roman  gladiatorial 
shows  first  entered  Greece.  Therefore 
the  Corinthians  would  understand  the 
"  Morituri  Salutamus  "  in  i  Corinthians 
iv,  9.  He  declared  he  had  been  made  "a 
spectacle  "  both  to  angels  and  men. 

One  of  the  most  conspicuous  build- 
ings in  Corinth  was  its  theatre.  Profes- 
sor Richardson  has  recovered  its  site.  It 
was  one  of  the  three  objects  first  seen  by 
visitors  whether  they  approached  from 
the  north  by  Lechaeum  harbor,  from  the 
east  by  Cenchreae,  or  by  the  northeast 
from  Athens,  and  it  stood  unroofed, 
open  to  the  sky.    May  it  not  be  that 


NEW    CORINTH  153 

the  recollection  of  this  structure  moved 
the  Apostle  to  employ  the  word  "  the- 
atre "  in  the  more  picturesque  but  less 
usual  sense  of  "  spectacle  ?  " 

He  describes  himself  and  his  fellow 
disciples  —  or  perhaps  he  tactfully  refers 
to  himself  only  —  as  the  "  offscourings 
of  the  earth  ;  "  weak,  helpless,  worthless 
except  for  the  sustaining  power  of  Christ. 
The  epithet  was  an  accurate  description 
—  familiar  too  —  of  the  rabble  which 
Julius  Caesar  had  sent  to  people  New 
Corinth,  but  which  his  genius  had 
moulded  into  a  great  and  splendid  city. 

Was  not  the  Apostle  thinking  of  the 
appalling  doom  of  Old  Corinth  when,  in 
the  Second  Epistle,  he  wrote  the  poignant 
entreaty  which  seems  to  press  home  the 
whole  contents  of  his  letter,  "  Now  then 
we  are  ambassadors  for  Christ,  as  though 
God  did  beseech  you  by  us :  we  pray 
you  in  Christ's  stead,  be  ye  reconciled  to 
God." 


154  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

II.  Note  some  of  the  allusions  used 
to  describe  Christ  and  his  church.  The 
oldest  building  in  Corinth  was  a  Doric 
temple,  of  which  until  the  earthquake 
of  A.  D.  1858  five  stately  columns  re- 
mained. Three  I  believe  are  still  erect, 
the  only  work  of  human  hands  remain- 
ing above  ground  to  mark  the  ancient 
site.  Through  the  effacing  devastations 
which  had  annihilated  other  structures 
this  temple  had  stood  in  solitary  gran- 
deur ;  not  of  course  unscathed,  but 
damaged  so  slightly  that  it  had  been 
repaired  and  appeared  in  New  Corinth 
almost  as  superb  as  it  had  been  in  the 
elder  city.  Thus  it  repeated  to  every 
Corinthian  who  should  read  them  the 
words,  "  Other  foundation  (enduring 
foundation)  can  no  man  lay  than  that 
which  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus  Christ." 
Every  man's  work  shall  be  tried  by  fire 
as  that  temple  has  been,  and  if  any  man's 
work  abide  (as   it  has  done)  "  he  shall 


NEW    CORINTH  155 

receive  a  reward."  As  is  your  temple  so 
is  Christ's  church.  It,  too,  shall  outlast 
all  fires. 

In  another  way  I  think  he  repeated 
the  same  truth,  though  this  I  suggest 
with  hesitation. 

The  most  remarkable  feature  in  the  to- 
pography of  Corinth  was  its  rock  citadel, 
towering  behind  the  city  and  supplying 
all  the  water  it  had. 

"  Our  fathers,"  wrote  Paul,  "  drank 
of  a  spiritual  rock  that  followed  them ; 
and  the  rock  was  Christ." 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  explain 
the  figure  by  reference  to  a  late  rabbini- 
cal legend  that  the  rock  smitten  by 
Moses,  or  a  part  of  it,  moved  in  the  wake 
of  the  Israelites  on  their  way  to  Pales- 
tine and  supplied  them  with  water. 
That  suggestion  seems  to  me  absurd. 
The  natural  meaning  of  the  word  used 
by  Paul  is  "cliff"  rather  than  "rock," 
and  the  allusion   sounds  to  me  Hke  a 


156  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

reminiscence  of  the  Acrocorinthus.  As 
that  cliff  supplies  the  city  before  it,  so 
Christ  follows  his  people  always  to  give 
them  "  living  water." 

Again,  the  little  plain  not  far  north- 
west of  the  city  was  one  of  the  most 
fertile  in  Greece.  As  such  it  was  pro- 
verbial. A  Greek  who  had  a  farm  to  sell 
would  be  likely  to  say,  "  It  is  as  rich  as 
the  plain  of  Sicyon."  On  every  other 
side  of  Corinth  the  land  was  notoriously 
barren.  Remember  this  when  you  read 
what  the  Apostle  wrote  about  sowing 
and  reaping.  An  oasis  attracts  more  at- 
tention than  a  prairie. 

III.  But  the  three  most  familiar  pas- 
sages in  all  Paulas  writings,  the  three 
which  we  all  know  by  heart,  are  the 
13  th  of  First  Corinthians,  which  treats  of 
love,  the  15th  of  the  same  epistle,  and 
the  5th  of  Second  Corinthians,  which 
affirm  the  resurrection  of  the  body. 
How  came  they  to  be  written  ? 


NEW   CORINTH  157 

We  have  seen  that  Corinth  adored  the 
goddess  of  the  body  as  Athens  adored 
the  deity  of  mind.  The  message  given 
to  Corinth  was  this,  "  Worship  God  with 
your  bodies."  She  did  not  long  obey  it. 
She  soon  made  the  servant  the  master, 
and  began  to  worship  the  body  itself. 
Hence  came  her  depravities  and  her  ruin. 
Post-apostolic  teachers,  when  they  found 
communities  traveling  that  same  bad 
road,  tried  to  save  them  by  preaching 
asceticism,  that  is,  by  contempt  and  abuse 
of  the  body.  Their  doctrine  was,  "  You 
have  pampered  your  bodies  and  become 
vile.  Reverse  this  and  grow  good. 
Starve  your  bodies,  scourge  them,  walk 
on  nails,  go  into  monasteries.  That  is 
the  road  to  sanctity." 

Paul  said  no  such  thing.  As  he  had 
said  to  the  men  of  Athens,  "  Whom 
therefore  ye  ignorantly  worship,  him  de- 
clare I  unto  you,"  so  he  simply  repeated 
to  the  Corinthians  their  own  original  and 


158  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

acknowledged  '  creed  in  an  intelligible 
way  and  urged  them  to  obey  the  com- 
mand given  them  in  the  beginning.  He 
said  to  them,  as  the  Isthmian  games  had 
said  before  they  were  perverted, "  Glorify 
God  in  your  body."  "  Whether  there- 
fore ye  eat,  or  drink,  or  whatsoever  " 
bodily  act  "ye  do,  do  all  to  the  glory  of 
God."  For  this  purpose  the  Isthmian 
games  were  instituted,  and  for  this  even 
the  worship  of  Aphrodite  was  begun. 
Through  forgetting  that  purpose  the 
Aphrodite  cult  had  become  a  cesspool 
that  may  not  be  described.  A  thousand 
sirens  alluring  to  ruin  were  the  priest- 
esses that  ministered  at  her  temple  in 
Old  Corinth,  and  there  the  nameless  in- 
famies catalogued  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  had  set  the  fashions  which  New 
Corinth  followed.  So  far  had  this  gone 
that  the  Apostle  wrote  two  whole  chap- 
ters for  an  antiseptic  to  the  sewage  which 
had  oozed  from  the  Temple  of  Venus 


NEW   CORINTH  159 

into  the  church  of  Christ,  and  was 
obliged  to  bid  the  Christian  women  of 
Corinth  keep  silence  even  in  the  meet- 
ings of  believers,  lest  they  should  be 
mistaken  for  priestesses  of  shame. 

It  was  because  the  Corinthians  had 
perverted  the  Lord's  Supper  into  an  im- 
itation of  the  Venus  cult  orgies,  where 
gluttony  and  drunkenness  were  rife,  that 
he  warned  them  against  celebrating  it  in 
a  manner  so  unworthy. 

All  this  shamefulness  was  practiced 
under  the  name  of  love.  How  did  Paul 
fight  it  ? 

"  If  I  speak  with  the  tongues  of  men 
and  of  angels,  but  have  not  love,  I  am 
become  sounding  brass,  or  a  clanging 
cymbal." 

"Faith,  hope,  love,  .  .  .  and  the  great- 
est of  these  is  love ! "  The  false  must 
fly  when  the  true  appears.  To  discredit 
the  counterfeit  he  shows  the  genuine 
bill. 


i6o  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

We  come  now  to  the  15th  of  First 
and  the  5th  of  Second  Corinthians. 

Remember  that  both  Old  and  New 
Corinth  worshiped  the  goddess  of  the 
body,  that  the  Isthmian  games  were  es- 
tablished to  honor  Deity  by  the  develop- 
ment of  physical  strength  and  beauty, 
that  the  Venus  cult  sprang  from  the 
same  root. 

Observe  how  often  and  with  what 
emphasis  in  the  two  epistles  Paul  refers 
to  the  body,  —  to  its  purposes,  its  dig- 
nity, the  honor  divinely  put  upon  it, 
and  the  duty  of  not  obeying  but  con- 
trolling its  impulses.  "  Glorify  God  with 
your  bodies  "  may  almost  be  called  the 
theme  of  which  the  two  epistles  form  the 
symphony.  In  that  culminating  chapter 
wherein  the  Apostle  turns  the  powers  of 
the  world  to  come  upon  the  wheels  of 
present  duty,  and,  reading  the  writings 
of  time  by  the  light  of  eternity,  exclaims, 
"  O  death,  where  is  thy  sting,"  his  text 


NEW   CORINTH  i6i 

is  not  the  immortal  spirit,  but  the  mortal 
body.  He  urges  men  so  to  live  that  their 
"  mortal  bodies  "  may  be,  as  their  Maker 
means  them  to  be,  germs  of  immortal 
ones ;  spiritual  bodies  that  shall  be  to 
these  of  flesh  and  blood  as  tulips  to  their 
bulbs  or  roses  to  their  seeds.  Thus  again 
he  recalls  the  Corinthians  to  their  origi- 
nal creed,  given  them  long  before  by  the 
same  Power  who  spake  through  his  lips 
and  pen.  They  had  perverted  the  mes- 
sage beyond  the  recognition  of  any  eye 
unopened  by  the  Spirit  who  had  caught 
it  in  the  beginning. 

Your  bodies,  wrote  Paul,  are  temples 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  If  we  glorify  Him 
in  them,  this  corruptible  shall  put  on 
incorruption,  and  death  shall  be  swal- 
lowed up  in  victory.  So  the  Apostle 
seems  to  me  to  teach. 

That  truth,  written  in  Hebrew  liter- 
ature by  Isaiah,  had  been  carved  by  un- 
known architects,  and  to  a  seer's  eyes  was 


i62  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

still  legible  upon  the  foundation  stones 
of  the  temples  of  Poseidon  and  Aphro- 
dite. 

^'  For  we  know,"  reiterates  the  Apos- 
tle, substituting  for  the  figure  of  plant 
life  passing  out  of  its  seed  shell  into  a 
glorified  body,  that  of  a  man  moving  out 
of  a  tent  pitched  for  a  night  into  a  pal- 
ace constructed  for  eternity, "  that  if  our 
earthly  house  of  this  tabernacle  were  dis- 
solved, we  have  a  building  of  God,  an 
house  not  made  with  hands,  eternal  in  the 
heavens." 


VII 
COLOSSI 

THE  CITY  OF  THE  SLAVE 

Some  ninety  miles  eastward  from  Ephe- 
sus  the  river  Lycos  joins  the  Meander 
on  its  way  to  the  JEgea.n,  Here  high 
mountains  approaching  each  other  from 
the  north  and  the  south  leave  a  narrow 
passage  for  the  commingled  waters,  then 
retreat  and  come  close  together  again  ten 
miles  farther  east.  The  plain  they  inclose 
is  the  Lycos  valley.  In  shape  it  resembles 
an  obtuse-angled  triangle.  The  moun- 
tains which  rim  it  are  rugged,  and  some 
of  their  peaks  rise  more  than  eight  thou- 
sand feet  above  the  sea.  Upon  this  plain 
were  three  cities  grouped  by  St.  Paul 
almost  as  parts  of  a  single  metropolis. 

At  the  northwest  angle  of  the  valley 
upon  the 'mountain-side  was  Hierapolis, 


1 64  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

or  in  English  the  "  Sacred  City."  It  was 
celebrated  for  a  cave  of  superb  stalactites 
and  a  mephitic  spring  the  vapors  from 
which  were  believed  to  inspire  priests  and 
poison  laymen.  Here  was  a  great  tem- 
ple to  Cybele  which  long  before  Paul's 
day  had  been  a  centre  of  Phrygian  wor- 
ship. Here,  too,  in  later  times  dwelt 
Bishop  Papias,  believed  by  some  — 
though  probably  on  insufficient  grounds 
—  to  have  been  the  amanuensis  of  "  the 
disciple  whom  Jesus  loved."  Here,  too, 
there  is  some  reason  to  think  that  the 
four  daughters  of  Philip  the  Evangelist 
"  which  did  prophesy  "  spent  their  last 
days.  What,  however,  gives  the  place  its 
chief  interest  for  us  is  an  uncontroverted 
fact  to  be  mentioned  presently. 

Six  miles  south  of  Hierapolis,  at  the 
southwest  angle  of  the  plain,  south  also 
of  the  Lycos,  was  a  city  named  originally 
"Jove's-town,"  but  renamed  after  his 
wife,  by  one  of  the  Seleucids, "  Laodicea." 


COLOSSiE  165 

An  emporium  of  trade,  possessing  a 
widely  celebrated  sanitarium  or  Temple 
of  iEsculapius,  the  priests  of  which  were 
believed  to  have  the  secret  for  manu- 
facturing an  eye-salve  of  unequaled  vir- 
tue, the  wealthiest  and  most  luxurious 
city  between  Ephesus  and  Antioch,  Lao- 
dicea  is  remembered  only  on  account  of 
the  caustic  letter  drawn  from  the  author 
of  the  Apocalypse  by  the  laxity  of  her 
Christians. 

At  the  southeast  angle  of  the  plain, 
ten  miles  east-southeast  of  Laodicea, 
was  Colossae.  It  was  perched  upon  a 
shelf  or  foothill  where  the  Lycos  had 
cut  a  gorge  through  the  mountain  ridge. 
The  gorge,  steep  and  narrow,  bisected  the 
city,  and  is  said  by  Professor  Ramsay  to 
be  two  and  a  half  miles  long,  varying  in 
width  between  one  hundred  and  fifty 
and  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet.  The 
"  Royal  Road  "  which  connected  Smyrna 
and  Ephesus  with  Persia  ran  through 


i66  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  Lycos  valley  and  gave  importance 
to  each  of  its  three  cities. 

For  a  long  time  Colossae  was  the 
most  considerable  of  the  three,  but  in 
the  time  of  Paul  Laodicea  had  taken 
precedence  and  Colossae  was  compara- 
tively insignificant.  At  that  time  it  was 
the  home  of  a  certain  good-for-nothing 
slave,  a  thief  and  a  vagabond,  and  of  his 
master,  a  refined  Christian  gentleman. 
This  fact  alone  has  given  it  distinction 
for  all  ages.  Providence  has  used  the 
insignificance  of  the  place  as  art  has 
employed  the  monotony  of  the  Nile  to 
emphasize  the  grandeur  of  the  pyramids. 
Paul  has  brought  it  about  that  we  must 
think  of  Colossae  because  the  name  is  in 
the  New  Testament,  and  that  in  think- 
ing of  Colossae  nothing  shall  distract  our 
attention  from  two  facts  more  important 
for  us  to  know  than  anything  taught  by 
the  splendors  of  Ephesus.  Those  facts 
are :  — 


COLOSSI  167 

I.  How  the  Christian  church  was 
cradled,  fostered,  and  made  the  strongest 
power  in  the  world. 

II.  How  it  attacked  and  destroyed 
the  most  malignant  social  and  political 
disease  of  antiquity,  a  disease  which  ap- 
peared to  such  men  as  Cicero,  Epictetus, 
and  Juvenal  to  be  both  deadly  and  in- 
curable. 

There  are  times  when  Christian  pa- 
triots lose  heart  as  they  pause  to  take 
breath  in  their  conflicts  with  the  worship 
of  Mammon.  A  glance  backward  should 
revive  their  faith. 

In  the  year  a.  d.  35  the  wealth,  the 
fashion,  the  intellectual  life  of  the  world, 
all  its  literature,  all  its  science,  all  its  art, 
all  its  philosophy,  all  its  religions,  all  its 
business,  all  its  soldiers,  all  its  ships,  both 
of  commerce  and  of  war,  all  its  amuse- 
ments, all  its  statesmen,  all  its  politi- 
cians, all  its  rulers,  all  its  lawyers,  and 
most  important  of  all,  its  little  children 


1 68  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

were  precisely  as  they  would  have  been 
if  no  sermon  had  been  preached  on  the 
mountain  and  no  voice  had  prayed, 
"  Father  !  forgive  them.** 

Three  centuries  later  all  was  changed. 
The  powers  of  the  state  were  nominally 
Christian ;  the  world's  ships  were  steered 
by  the  pilots  of  Galilee,  its  buildings 
constructed  by  the  carpenter  of  Naza- 
reth, its  costliest  marbles  inscribed  with 
his  name.  How  did  the  change  come  to 
pass  ?  The  two  epistles  sent  by  Paul  to 
Colossae  reveal  the  secret. 

St.  Paul  is  a  prisoner  at  Rome.  Near 
three  hundred  thousand  persons  are  in 
the  great  circus  of  that  city.  Some  are 
swearing,  some  are  betting,  some  are 
fighting.  All  are  alert  with  excitement, 
for  it  is  race  day.  The  most  admired 
men  in  Rome  are  the  jockeys  who  will 
soon  appear,  one  wearing  a  white,  one  a 
red,  one  a  blue,  but  the  favorite  a  green 
cap.    It  is  some  years  before  the  advent 


COLOSStE  169 

of  the  charioteer  Diodes,  whose  skill  as 
a  whip  brought  him  a  fortune  so  great 
that  he  left  his  son  a  million  and  a  quar- 
ter pounds  sterling,  but  it  is  nearing  the 
time  when  Juvenal  declared  a  jockey- 
could  earn  a  hundred-fold  more  than  a 
leading  lawyer;  the  time  of  which  he 
wrote,  "The  whole  of  Rome  has  flocked 
to  the  circus  to-day,  and  the  uproar 
of  the  crowd  can  be  heard  miles  away." 
Caligula,  by  spending  in  the  stables  the 
time  he  should  have  passed  in  the  Sen- 
ate, has  made  the  society  of  jockeys  more 
envied  than  that  of  Conscript  Fathers, 
and  Nero,  though  he  began  by  pretend- 
ing to  frown  upon  that  scandal,  has  cast 
off  disguises  and  taught  the  populace  to 
regard  his  sceptre  as  a  trifle  compared 
with  his  whip. 

On  the  Aventine,  overlooking  the 
great  circus  and  within  sound  of  its  tur- 
moil, was  a  small  house  where  dwelt  a 
man  named  Aquila  with  his  wife  Priscilla. 


170  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

They  had  met  Paul  at  Corinth  a  few 
years  before,  had  been  his  hosts  there, 
and  to  Ephesus  the  three  had  journeyed 
together. 

And  now  in  their  little  parlor  at 
Rome  the  man  and  his  wife  with  a 
few  friends,  among  whom  probably  are 
Pudens  and  his  daughter  Pudentia,  are 
praying  for  their  imprisoned  friend  and 
teacher.  To  human  ears  their  prayers 
would  seem  to  float  on  the  roar  of  the 
circus  as  chips  on  the  maelstrom.  They 
are  praying  to  Christ,  and  Rome  does 
not  know  that  they  are  there.  But  when 
the  races  are  over  they  keep  on  praying. 
Others  join  them,  one  by  one,  until  the 
little  parlor  is  too  small  to  hold  their 
number.  A  partition  is  knocked  out.  In 
due  time  from  this  seed  will  grow  what 
we  call  a  church.  It  is  already  what  Paul 
meant  by  that  name.  It  is  like  the  house 
of  Pudens  which,  after  being  buried  by 
the  debris  of  centuries,  will  be  excavated. 


COLOSS.E  171 

and  on  its  floor  a  mosaic  found  of  the 
Saviour  holding  a  book  upon  which  is 
written,  "  The  Lord,  defender  of  the 
house  of  Pudens." 

Could  any  vision  appear  to  most  of 
the  contemporaries  of  Paul  more  fantas- 
tic than  one  declaring  that  the  prayer- 
room  of  Aquila  should  supplant  the 
circus  of  Nero  ? 

While  Paul  in  his  prison  was  cheered 
by  the  prayers  of  these  humble  people, 
two  visitors  came  to  him.  One  was  a  well- 
known  traveler  from  the  East  named 
Epaphras.  He  tells  how  a  certain  rich 
man,  Philemon,  an  acquaintance  of  both, 
has,  with  his  wife  Apphia,  established  in 
his  home  at  Colossae  such  another  prayer- 
meeting  as  that  of  Aquila.  "  But," 
Epaphras  seems  to  have  said,  "  you  had 
better  write  them  a  letter,  for  in  spite  of 
all  you  told  them  some  of  those  breth- 
ren, influenced  partly  by  the  priests  of 
Hierapolis  and  still  more  by  the  Jews 


172  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

of  Laodicea,  are  coming  to  think  that 
Christ  is  a  hard  master,  and  that  they  can 
please  him  only  by  painful  penances. 
Instead  of  enjoying  the  liberty  you 
preached,  they  are  acting  as  slaves  of  a 
cruel  lord." 

So  Paul  wrote  the  Epistle  to  the  Co- 
lossians,  but  before  he  had  finished  it, 
perhaps,  another  visitor  appeared.  He 
is  in  rags,  half  starved,  and  looks  like 
a  hunted  hare.  There  may  have  been  a 
conversation  something  like  this  :  — 

"  Who  are  you  ?  " 

"  My  name  is  Onesimus.  I  am  a  slave. 
I  belong  to  Philemon  of  Colossae.  I 
robbed  him  and  ran  away.  The  police 
are  after  me.   I  don't  know  what  to  do." 

"  Why  have  you  come  to  me  ? " 

"  I  was  with  my  master  in  Ephesus, 
and  heard  what  you  said  —  and  —  and 
I  have  nowhere  else  to  go." 

Some  years  ago  my  bell  rang  softly. 
I  opened  the  door.    There  stood  a  little 


COLOSSiE  173 

girl.  She  was  thinly  clad  and  shivering, 
for  it  was  winter.    Hungry  too. 

"  Is  this  Minister  Wright's  house  ?  " 
asked  the  waif. 

"Yes!" 

"  Are  you  Minister  Wright  ?  " 

"Yes!" 

"  Take  me." 

She  was  cold  and  hungry,  and,  worse 
than  either,  a  lost  child.  She  had  heard, 
perhaps  in  some  mission  school,  that 
Jesus  loved  little  children,  and  with  swift 
childlike  logic  inferred  that  therefore 
Christ's  ministers  must  take  care  of  them. 
I  named  her  my  "  Onesima,"  for  she  made 
me  understand  how  Paul  felt  when  he 
wrote  that  second  letter  to  Colossae  in 
behalf  of  the  slave  who  knew  only  that 
he  was  lost,  and  that  the  Apostle  was  the 
minister  of  One  who  came  to  seek  and 
to  save  that  which  was  lost. 

These  two  epistles,  sent,  the  one  to 
Philemon  and  the  other  to  the  church 


174  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

which  was  in  his  house,  both  of  them 
full  of  affectionate  greetings  from  the 
little  Christian  Endeavor  Society  in 
Rome,  show  how  the  early  church,  unre- 
garded and  unnoticed  by  the  conspicuous 
powers  of  the  time,  undermined  and 
supplanted  them  all  by  quietly  training 
fathers  and  mothers,  masters  and  slaves 
and  little  children,  poor  men  and  rich 
men,  in  their  homes  and  in  their  shops, 
to  try  to  "  do  these  sayings  of  mine." 
They  show  us  how  Christianity  achieved 
that  task,  apparently  the  most  hopeless 
ever  set  before  men,  the  abolition  of 
slavery. 

Outside  of  Palestine  slavery  was  uni- 
versal. The  work  of  city  and  country 
was  done  by  slaves.  They  were  not  re- 
garded as  human.  For  them  the  laws 
afforded  no  protection.  Their  enormous 
numbers  inspired  general  apprehension, 
and  many  of  the  cruelties  practiced  upon 
them  by  their  masters  were  caused  by  the 


COLOSSiE  175 

conviction  that  they  could  be  kept  in 
subjection  by  fear  alone.  Thus,  when  a 
certain  slave  slew  with  a  small  spear, 
single-handed,  a  boar  so  fierce  that  the 
hunters  dared  not  face  it,  and  thereby 
saved  the  lives  of  some  of  them,  his  Ro- 
man master  had  him  crucified  for  carry- 
ing a  weapon,  and  Cicero  remarked  that 
perhaps  the  master  had  been  a  little  harsh, 
but  he  would  not  venture  an  opinion. 
When  a  slave  was  cut  into  mince  meat 
and  thrown  to  the  eels  for  dropping  a 
glass  goblet,  no  indignation  was  expressed 
by  the  guests  at  the  banquet. 

Two  incidents  which  probably  oc- 
curred while  Paul  was  a  prisoner  at 
Rome  may  serve  to  show  what  slavery 
in  that  city  was.  The  first,  cited  by  Cel- 
sus  and  accepted  by  Origen  as  true,  was 
this.  A  slave  boy  born  at  Hierapolis, 
the  city  near  Colossae,  as  we  have  seen, 
came  into  the  possession  of  Epaphrodi- 
tus,  who,  himself  a  slave,  had  become  a 


176  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

freedman  and  was  Nero*s  most  trusted 
intimate.  The  child  was  weak  and  sickly, 
and  his  master  hated  him.  I  suppose 
his  animosity  was  inspired  by  the  inher- 
ent malignity  felt  by  vice  toward  virtue. 
The  master  was  amusing  himself  by  tor- 
turing the  slave  when  the  little  fellow 
said,  "  Master,  you  '11  break  that  leg  if 
you  twist  it  any  more." 

Another  wrench.  The  leg  was  broken. 
Without  a  cry  or  the  change  of  a  feature 
the  child  said :  — 

"  There,  I  told  you  you  would  break 
it!" 

The  boy  was  Epictetus. 

Paul  may  have  known  of  this,  for  it 
occurred  in  "  Caesar's  household." 

While  Paul  was  a  prisoner,  a  slave  at 
Rome  killed  his  master  Pedanius.  It  was 
the  law  that  all  the  slaves  of  the  mur- 
dered man  should  be  slaughtered.  Pe- 
danius had  four  hundred,  many  of  them 
women  and  children.    It  was  proposed 


COLOSSiE  177 

to  make  an  exception  by  sparing  the 
children.  The  proposal  called  forth  an 
impassioned  speech  from  one  of  the 
ablest  senators,  in  which  he  said  :  — 

"We  have  in  our  service  whole  na- 
tions of  slaves,  the  scum  of  mankind, 
collected  from  all  quarters  of  the  earth : 
a  race  of  men  who  bring  with  them 
foreign  rites  and  the  religion  of  their 
country  or  no  religion  at  all.  In  such  a 
conflux  if  the  laws  are  silent  what  pro- 
tection remains  for  the  master  ?  " 

This  protest  was  effectual.  The  law 
took  its  course.  The  four  hundred  — 
men,  women,  and  children — were  slaugh- 
tered. 

At  this  time  —  let  it  be  remem- 
bered in  honor  of  the  Apostle  —  to  give 
food  or  shelter,  to  conceal  or  in  any  way 
assist  a  fugitive  slave  was  to  incur  the 
penalty  of  death.  This  Paul  knew  when 
Onesimus  came  to  him.  He  did  not 
justify  the  suppliant  for  robbing  his  mas- 


178  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

ter  or  even  for  running  away.  He  does 
not  seem  even  to  have  been  aware  that 
slavery  was  wrong.  He  had  just  written 
the  letter  in  which  he  said,  "  Slaves, 
obey  in  all  things  your  masters  accord- 
ing to  the  flesh,  not  with  eye  service  as 
men  pleasers,  but  in  singleness  of  heart, 
fearing  God,"  as  if  he  thought  slavery 
a  divine  institution.  But  he  writes  to 
Philemon,  the  slave's  master,  reminding 
him  that  the  slave  is  a  Christian,  a 
brother  therefore,  and  that  we  are  all 
alike  Christ's  slaves  and  must  treat  our 
slaves  as  Christ  treats  his.  He  speaks 
of  himself  and  Epaphras  as  "  slaves  of 
Christ,"  but  calls  Onesimus  "  a  brother 
beloved." 

To  the  slave  he  said  in  substance, 
*'  All  things  whatsoever  ye  would  that 
men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so 
to  them."  To  the  master  he  said  the 
same.  Through  obedience  to  such  teach- 
ing, without  help  of  human  law,  or  even 


COLOSSI  179 

protest  against  its  iniquities,  slavery  dis- 
appeared. 

There  is  a  bondage  worse  than  that 
of  Onesimus.  The  slavery  of  the  ergas- 
tula  was  mild  compared  to  that  of  the 
palace.  Well  might  Caligula  have  en- 
vied Onesimus.  That  emperor,  the  son 
of  Germanicus,  was  the  idol  of  Rome. 
When  he  took  the  sceptre  the  Romans 
called  him  their  "  star,"  their  "  darling." 
They  offered  a  hundred  and  sixty  thou- 
sand victims  upon  their  altars,  to  pur- 
chase blessings  upon  him  from  the  gods 
in  whom  they  believed.  They  thronged 
their  temples,  and  scores  of  them  offered 
their  lives  to  the  unseen  powers  as  a  ran- 
som for  his.  They  inscribed  his  name 
upon  a  shield  of  gold,  and  decreed  that 
upon  an  appointed  day  each  year  their 
priests,  their  senators,  and  their  noblest 
young  men  and  maidens  should  carry  it 
to  the  Capitol  with  pagans  for  his  virtues 
and  prayers  for  his  prosperity.  When  he 


i8o  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

ordered  the  heads  to  be  removed  from 
the  statues  of  the  great  gods  and  replaced 
by  copies  of  his  own,  put  a  gold  image 
of  himself  in  the  temple  built  for  his 
worship,  and  had  it  clothed  each  day  in 
robes  like  those  he  chose  that  day  to 
wear,  no  protest  checked  his  arrogance. 
His  wealth  was  beyond  computation.  He 
could  form  no  wish  within  the  power  of 
man  to  gratify  which  was  not  imme- 
diately performed.  Yet  within  the  com- 
pass of  his  empire  there  was  probably  no 
other  slave  so  wretched  as  he. 

When  it  thunders  this  divine  man 
wraps  his  head  in  his  cloth  of  gold  and 
creeps  under  the  bed  quaking  for  fear 
of  the  gods  he  has  supplanted.  He 
flies  to  Naples,  and  the  smoke  of  Ve- 
suvius terrifies  him  into  spasms.  Three 
hours  of  the  twenty-four  are  the  most 
he  ever  hopes  to  sleep,  and  during  them 
he  is  tortured  by  horrible  dreams.  In 
them  he  hears  the  sea  roaring,  sees  it 


COLOSSiE  i8i 

draw  nearer  and  nearer  while  he  vainly 
attempts  to  fly,  shrieks  as  he  mistakes 
his  own  cold  sweat  of  fear  for  its  waters. 
He  leaps  from  his  bed  and  wanders 
through  the  gorgeous  corridors  of  his 
palace.  He  dares  not  have  them  lighted, 
for  to  his  tortured  brain  assassination 
seems  to  lurk  behind  every  pillar,  and 
light  will  show  the  dagger  where  to 
strike.  He  is  not  mad.  De  Quincey's 
attempt  to  prove  him  so  proves  only  the 
insanity  of  vicious  passions  unrestrained. 
His  crimes  are  his  only  chains.  They  are 
the  furies  which  have  built  the  prison 
from  which  he  cannot  escape.  In  vain 
he  tries  by  superstitious  rites  to  unlock 
the  iron  gates  of  his  penitentiary. 

This  terrified  man  is  a  colossal  por- 
trait of  those  among  the  Christians  of 
Colossas  for  whose  help  Paul  wrote. 
Conscience,  long  entranced  by  heathen 
abominations,  had  been  awakened  by  the 
vision   of  Christ.    How  to    appease   it 


i82  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

became  the  absorbing  quest  of  the  neo- 
phytes. Hierapolis  had  long  been  the 
centre  of  a  cult  which  taught  that  the 
unseen  powers  could  be  propitiated  by 
ascetic  tortures  and  in  no  other  way. 
In  the  whole  circle  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire there  was  no  other  religious  system 
which  called  for  self-torments  and  mu- 
tilations so  unspeakable  as  those  de- 
manded by  Sabazius  and  Cybele.  The 
contact  of  Christianity  with  paganism 
destroyed  paganism,  but  it  also  modified 
Christianity.  In  conquering  the  Roman 
eagles  it  turned  the  dove  of  Bethabara 
into  a  bird  of  prey.  Constantine  placed 
the  cross  above  the  sword,  but  only  to 
make  it  a  more  effective  weapon  of  war. 
And  when  Liberius  substituted  Christ- 
mas for  the  Saturnalia,  the  rioters,  driven 
from  the  cradle  of  Saturnus,  reassembled 
around  the  manger  of  Christ.  To  such 
dangers  Paul  was  unceasingly  alert. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  was 


COLOSSI  183 

largely  the  influence  of  Hierapolis  which 
opened  the  ears  of  Colossians  to  Juda- 
izing  teachers,  who  substituted  forms 
and  penances  for  trust  in  the  Father  and 
made  them  deaf  to  the  "  Come  unto  me." 

The  Epistle  to  Philemon  was  the  un- 
conscious proclamation  of  liberty  to  the 
slave  of  circumstances. 

The  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  was  the 
conscious  proclamation  of  liberty  to  the 
slave  of  self.  The  former  was  under- 
stood and  obeyed  centuries  before  Lu- 
ther retaught  the  world  the  meaning  of 
the  latter. 


VIII 
ANCYRA 

THE   CITY   OF   THE   WEATHERCOCKS 

Until  quite  recently  the  province  of 
Central  Asia  Minor,  marked  on  modern 
maps  "Angora,"  was  regarded  without 
question  as  the  Galatia  of  St.  Paul.  Cer- 
tain scholars  of  repute  now  think  that 
it  is  not,  and  locate  the  "  churches  of 
Galatia  "  addressed  by  the  Apostle  in  a 
region  farther  south.  Those  who  care  to 
examine  the  arguments  for  and  against 
the  new  theory  will  find  them  stated  with 
fairness  and  force  in  the  Encyclopedia 
Biblica.  I  do  not  think  they  have  over- 
thrown or  even  seriously  undermined 
the  long-accepted  view.  The  correctness 
of  that  view  seems  to  me  confirmed 
by  the  facts  which  justify  the  title  of 
this  paper  —  facts   which   show    clearly 


ANCYRA  185 

that  the  contents  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Galatians  answer  to  the  known  charac- 
teristics of  the  North  Galatians  as  a  screw 
fits  into  its  matrix. 

Ancyra  was  their  capital  city.  The 
word  signifies  an  anchor.  Tradition  said 
that  Midas  found  an  anchor  buried  in  the 
ground,  built  a  city  over  it,  and  named 
the  place  after  his  find.  To  readers  who 
recall  the  history  of  its  people  the  name 
will  seem  like  an  oak  in  a  cornfield, 
or  like  John  the  Baptist  among  reeds 
shaken  by  the  wind. 

It  is  the  business  of  an  anchor  to  stand 
fast  against  all  currents  ;  of  a  weathercock 
to  move  at  the  touch  of  every  breeze. 
Yet  with  equal  fidelity  to  facts  we  may 
call  Ancyra  an  anchor  or  a  weathercock, 
since  it  has  for  millenniums  held  a  race  to 
its  place  in  history  against  forces  work- 
ing with  tremendous  power  to  efface  it 
from  human  sight  and  memory,  yet  has 
shown  conspicuously  the  peculiar  quali- 


i86  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

ties  of  that  race  which  are  correctly  repre- 
sented by  a  weather  vane. 

"  The  prominent  qualities  of  the  Celtic 
race/*  says  Mommsen,  quoting  Thierry, 
"  were  personal  bravery,  in  which  they 
excelled  all  nations  ;  an  open,  impetuous 
temperament  accessible  to  every  impres- 
sion ;  much  intelligence  but  at  the  same 
time  extreme  mobility,  want  of  perse- 
verance, aversion  to  discipline  and  order ; 
ostentation  and  perpetual  discord  —  the 
result  of  boundless  vanity."  "  Such 
qualities,"  adds  Mommsen,  "  those  of 
good  soldiers  and  bad  citizens,  explain 
the  historic  fact  that  the  Celts  have 
shaken  all  states  and  have  founded 
none." 

Now  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  is  a 
protest  against  these  qualities,  which  may 
be  summed  up  in  the  single  word  "fickle- 
ness." Notice  a  few  of  the  Apostle's  vari- 
ations upon  that  theme. 

"  I  marvel  that  ye  are  so  soon  removed 


ANCYRA  187 

from  him  that  called  you  into  the  grace 
of  Christ  unto  another  gospel/* 

"  O  foolish  Galatians,  who  hath  be- 
witched you,  .  .  .  before  whose  eyes 
Jesus  Christ  hath  been  evidently  set 
forth,  crucified  among  you  ?  " 

"Stand  fast  therefore  in  the  liberty 
wherewith  Christ  hath  made  us  free, 
and  be  not  entangled  again  with  the 
yoke  of  bondage." 

He  contrasts  his  own  steadfastness 
with  their  vacillations. 

He  asks  them  why  it  is  that  whereas 
a  little  while  ago  they  were  ready  to  give 
their  eyes  for  him,  they  now  regard  him 
as  their  enemy. 

Thus  the  Apostle  expressed  the  ver- 
dict of  history. 

Ancyra  lay  some  two  hundred  miles 
east-southeast  of  Constantinople.  Un- 
der its  modern  name.  Angora,  it  is  cele- 
brated for  three  things :  the  amount  of 
electricity  in  its  atmosphere,   which  at 


i88  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

times  makes  a  blanket  seem  a  sheet  of 
flame ;  the  silky  hair  of  its  dogs,  its 
goats,  and  its  cats  ;  the  fact  that  these 
animals  when  removed  but  thirty  miles 
from  their  birthplace  change  their  coats 
and  become  like  other  dogs  and  goats 
and  cats. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  small  region 
named  Galatia,  or  the  "  Gaul's  Coun- 
try," were  as  different  from  their  neigh- 
bors as  is  an  outcrop  of  trap  from  the 
field  of  quartz  in  which  it  appears.  Their 
district  consisted  of  three  cantons,  of 
which  Ancyra,  Pessinus,  and  Tavium 
were  the  respective  capitals. 

Tavium  was  noted  for  its  sacred 
grove,  —  probably  a  memorial  of  Druid 
worship  changed  to  the  service  of  Jupiter, 
—  which  contained  a  colossal  bronze  of 
Jove,  and  was  to  its  canton,  perhaps  to 
all  three  cantons,  what  the  Cities  of 
Refuge  were  to  Israel  in  the  time  of  the 
Judges,  or  Notre  Dame  to  Paris  during 


ANCYRA  189 

the  Middle  Ages.  Pessinus  was  distin- 
guished by  a  temple  to  Cybele,  in  which 
a  black  meteorite  was  adored  as  an 
image  of  that  goddess.  Many  thought 
that  the  manner  of  its  advent  had  given 
name  to  the  place,  for  "  Pessinus  "  may 
mean  "  fallen,"  and  "  from  heaven  " 
might  have  been  understood. 

Ancyra,  however,  the  largest  and  most 
important  of  these  capitals,  may  be 
counted  the  "  metropolis  "  or  mother 
city  of  Galatia,  and  is  therefore  selected 
as  representative  of  all  those  to  whom 
St.  Paul's  epistle  was  addressed.  They 
belonged  to  the  same  stock  as  the  French 
and  Irish,  and  their  history  is  a  panorama 
of  the  two  most  conspicuous  traits  of 
Gallic  character,  —  that  passion  for  La 
Gloire  which  mistook  the  bulletins  of 
Napoleon  for  the  oracles  of  omnipotence, 
and  that  fickleness  which  in  eighteen 
years  changed  its  religion  four  times  and 
its  government  twelve. 


190  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

One  of  the  pictures  painted  indelibly 
upon  my  memory  in  childhood  is  that 
of  the  Roman  Senate  in  the  year  391  b.  c, 
when  the  Gallic  "  Brennus  "  or  "  king  " 
had  broken  into  Rome.  The  grand  old 
senators,  who  disdain  to  fly,  sit  calmly  in 
their  accustomed  places.  Their  white 
beards  flow  over  their  magnificent  offi- 
cial robes.  The  gigantic  warriors  who 
have  rushed  in  with  murderous  intent, 
awed  by  the  sight,  sink  their  swords, 
afraid  to  strike,  and  whisper,  "  They  are 
not  men.    They  are  gods  !  '* 

My  mother  taught  me  to  read  in  that 
picture  the  triumph  of  mind  over  muscle. 
She  told  me  those  Gauls  were  the  most 
terrific  foemen  Rome  ever  encountered. 
So  terrible  were  they  that  the  date  of 
their  invasion  was  recorded  in  the  Roman 
calendar  as  "  The  Black  Day,"  and  a 
sinking  fund  was  established  in  the  Cap- 
itol never  to  be  used  except  for  defense 
against  them.    She  taught  me  to  under- 


ANCYRA  191 

stand  why  it  was  that  the  equipment 
of  the  Roman  soldier  was  changed  after 
that  invasion  into  a  fashion  adapted  to 
resist  the  Gallic  style  of  attack,  and  thus 
was  born  the  Roman  legion,  which  in 
due  time,  like  Alexander's  phalanx,  con- 
quered the  world.    She  told  me  how 

The  Roman  matron  long  did  tame 
The  froward  child  with  Brennus*  name. 
And  Italy's  maidens  long  grew  pale 
When  Brennus*  sword  inspired  the  tale. 

Though  unwelcome  facts  have  tried 
to  blur  the  picture,  they  have  but  par- 
tially succeeded,  and  it  is  hard  for  me  to 
feel  the  gratitude  I  owe  to  those  who 
have  taught  me  that  it  was  not  senators 
remaining  in  their  chamber  because  they 
disdained  to  fly,  but  old  men  sitting  on 
their  doorsteps  because  they  were  too 
weak  to  run  away,  and  that  though  the 
Gauls  were  for  a  moment  awed  by  their 
venerable  appearance  (criticism  has  not 
yet,  I    believe,  shaved  off  the  august 


192  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

beards)  or  —  what  is  more  probable  — 
were  restrained  by  pity  for  their  feeble- 
ness, they  soon  killed  them,  every  one. 
A  hundred  and  eleven  years  after 
Brennus's  sword  and  the  cackling  geese, 
another  "  Brennus  *'  or  Gallic  king  burst 
into  Asia  Minor  and  caused  a  reign  of 
terror  there.  When  his  fierce  followers 
had  cast  anchor  in  the  district  named 
after  them  "  Galatia,"  they  continued  to 
be,  until  their  power  was  broken  by 
Pergamos,  the  virtual  arbiters  in  the  con- 
flicts which  were  perpetually  arising  be- 
tween the  rival  kinglets  of  Asia  Minor. 
They  rarely  made  war  on  their  own  ac- 
count and  did  not  enlarge  their  territory, 
but  lived  in  splendor  by  loaning  their 
arms  to  the  sovereign  who  bid  highest 
for  them.  To-day  they  fought  for  Pon- 
tus,  to-morrow  for  Pergamos.  They 
changed  their  allies  as  they  changed 
their  coats,  and  the  power  for  which 
they  fought  was  usually  assured  of  vie- 


ANCYRA  193 

tory  by  the  terror  of  their  name.  The 
Pergamene  marbles  in  the  museum  of 
Berlin  which  a  competent  critic  has  pro- 
nounced worthy  the  chisel  of  Phidias, 
and  the  statue  of  the  dying  Gaul  falsely 
named  "  The  dying  Gladiator,"  which 
adorns  the  Vatican,  are  memorials  by 
which  Pergamos  commemorated  her  vic- 
tory over  the  arrogant  Galatians.  In  spite 
of  this  defeat  their  individual  prowess 
long  remained  preeminent.  Four  hun- 
dred Galatian  giants  armed  and  equipped 
with  unequaled  splendor  formed  the 
body-guard  of  Cleopatra  until,  with 
characteristic  fickleness,  they  took  a 
similar  position  under  Herod,  her  bit- 
terest enemy. 

When  the  Gauls  entered  Asia  they 
brought  with  them  the  religion  of  the 
Druids,  and  practiced  its  mysteries  in 
the  forests  of  the  Dryads.  Of  these  the 
Sacred  Grove  at  Tavium,  with  its  bronze 
Jupiter  substituted  for  the   branch  of 


194  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

mistletoe,  was  a  memorial.  They  changed 
their  creed  as  lightly  as  their  descendants 
adopted  and  discarded  the  teachings  of 
Paul.  They  worshiped  Cybele  with  a 
fervor  which  made  their  country  her 
Mecca,  and  led  a  Roman  writer  into  the 
mistake  of  thinking  her  priests  were 
called  "  Galli  "  because  they  were  Gauls. 
That  veer  of  the  weathercock  anchored 
it  forever  in  the  history  of  Rome. 

The  year  204  b.  c.  shed  a  deadly  gloom 
over  Italy.  Hannibal  had  devastated  her 
plains,  and  intrenched  himself  among 
her  mountains.  The  last  Scipio  of  the 
lion's  brood  was  in  Africa.  The  Roman 
army  retained  for  home  defense  was 
threatened  by  pestilence,  with  annihila- 
tion. Rome  had  passed  nine  days  in  fast- 
ing, sacrifice,  and  prayer,  but  the  unseen 
powers  gave  no  sign.  The  people  had 
almost  wholly  lost  heart,  when  an  appall- 
ing visitation  sharpened  their  apprehen- 
sion into  panic.   A  shower  of  meteorites. 


ANCYRA  195 

such  as  no  living  Roman  had  ever  seen, 
descended.  They  thought  the  day  of 
doom  had  come.  An  obscure  prophecy 
in  the  Sibylline  books  suggested  the  only 
hope  of  salvation.  The  fire  from  the  sky 
was  interpreted  to  mean  that  the  gods 
would  be  appeased  if  the  image  of  the 
Great  Mother  which  had  fallen  from 
heaven  at  Pessinus  were  brought  to  Rome 
and  fitly  honored  there.  Instantly  an 
embassy  was  sent  to  Galatia.  Would 
the  priests  of  Cybele  permit  the  object 
of  their  adoration  to  be  taken  from  its 
shrine?  More  than  upon  their  armies, 
more  than  upon  the  genius  of  their  Scipio, 
the  hopes  of  the  Romans  hung  upon  the 
answer  to  that  question. 

What  arguments  were  urged  to  per- 
suade them  is  not  known,  but  the  rulers 
of  Pessinus  answered  "  Yes  !  " 

With  pomp  of  decorated  galleys 
and  priestly  pride  the  black  stone  was 
brought  to  the  Tiber.  The  most  blame- 


196  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

less  man  and  the  most  faultless  woman 
in  the  state  must  be  discovered  to  receive 
the  treasure  in  the  city's  name.  After 
long  debate  the  young  Publius  Scipio 
was  judged  to  be  the  most  virtuous  man 
and  Publia  Quinta  the  worthiest  woman. 
Preparations  for  the  reception  had  been 
completed  when,  as  Herodian  reports, 
an  unexpected  difficulty  arose.  The  ves- 
sel bearing  the  precious  freight  stuck  fast 
in  the  mud.  All  the  resources  of  the 
nation  could  not  budge  it,  for  Cybele 
herself  held  it  immovable.  What  should 
be  done  ?  A  priestess  of  Vesta  had  been 
sentenced  to  death  for  infidelity.  She 
prayed  that  her  innocence  might  be  sub- 
mitted to  the  Great  Mother  for  decision. 
Her  prayer  was  granted.  Entering  the 
water,  she  unbound  her  girdle,  fastened 
it  to  the  vessel's  prow,  drew  it  easily  into 
deep  water,  and  was  of  course  proved 
spotless. 

Without  vouching  for  the  truth  of  this 


ANCYRA  197 

subordinate  epis'ode,  which  was  probably 
invented  to  mitigate  the  jealousy  between 
the  priests  of  Asia  and  those  of  Italy,  by 
showing  that  Cybele  and  Vesta  were 
friends,  I  return  to  undisputed  history. 
Scipio,  followed  by  all  the  senators  in 
scarlet,  and  Quinta,  leading  the  most  illus- 
trious dames  of  Rome  in  their  best  gowns, 
met  the  ship  at  Ostia,  took  possession  of 
the  sacred  stone,  and  escorted  it  to  the 
capital.  The  ladies  danced  before  it ;  the 
statesmen  marched  beside  it  to  the  shrine 
prepared  upon  the  Palatine.  Thus  began 
the  festival  of  the  Roman  Madonna 
called  the  Megalesia.  A  temple  of  white 
marble  which  twelve  years  were  needed 
to  complete  was  erected  for  the  shrine 
of  the  goddess.  An  order  of  ministers 
named  from  the  Gallic  priests  was  es- 
tablished to  serve  her.  For  six  days 
every  April  the  doors  of  the  wealthy  were 
opened,  revealing  tables  laden  with  food 
and    wine,    around    which    images    of 


198  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  great  gods  were  seated  with  Cybele. 
Whosoever  would  might  enter  and  par- 
take without  money  and  without  price. 
Prisoners  were  set  free.  Senators  formed 
processions  to  the  temple.  The  noblest 
matrons  —  even  Vestals,  it  is  believed  — 
danced  before  them.  In  front  of  all,  the 
black  stone  in  a  gilded  chariot,  to  which 
were  harnessed  lions  of  solid  silver,  was 
drawn  by  priests  who  had  bathed  in 
blood.  Slaves  were  obliged  to  keep  out 
of  sight.  Plays  illustrating  the  transpor- 
tation of  the  image  from  Galatia  were 
performed  in  the  theatres.  The  Imperial 
City  never  bestowed  a  tithe  of  such  hon- 
ors upon  Scipio  for  defeating  Hannibal. 

Momentous  as  the  change  of  the  Ga- 
latians  from  the  religion  of  the  Druids 
to  the  worship  of  Cybele  proved  to 
Rome,  another  veer  of  the  weathercock 
is  more  significant  to  us. 

The  Emperor  Augustus  died  in  the 
fourteenth  year  of  our  era.    During  his 


ANCYRA  199 

reign  more  than  in  any  other  equal 
length  of  time  those  subordinate  forces 
and  facilities  which  cooperated  with  the 
life  of  Christ  to  assure  the  victory  of 
Christianity  were  set  in  order.  The 
Augustan  was  not  only  the  Elizabethan 
age  of  Rome  in  literature,  philosophy, 
and  art ;  it  was  also  the  period  which  is 
still  the  most  important  of  all  periods 
for  the  student  of  Christianity  to  under- 
stand. 

Though  by  no  means  a  slave  to  van- 
ity, Augustus  appreciated  adequately  the 
importance  of  his  achievements,  and  was 
alive  to  the  significance  of  most  of  the 
forces  working  under  him.  The  method 
he  took  to  perpetuate  the  memory  of 
them  was  unique. 

The  tomb  he  built  upon  the  Campus 
Martius  would  merit  notice  if  for  no 
other  reason  than  its  beauty.  It  was  a 
drum  of  Carrara  marble  more  than  two 
hundred  feet  in  diameter,  and  higher 


200  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

than  the  reach  of  a  man's  hand.  Upon 
the  roof,  which  was  nearly  flat,  rested  a 
cone  of  earth  covered  to  the  top  with 
evergreens,  its  apex  surmounted  by  a 
bronze  statue  of  himself.  The  whole 
was  surrounded  by  two  concentric  walls, 
one  of  bronze,  the  other  of  marble,  in- 
closing between  them  gardens  where 
fountains  played,  streams  rippled,  flow- 
ers bloomed,  and  birds  sang.  On  each 
side  of  the  entrance,  between  the  outer 
wall  of  marble  and  the  inner  one  of 
bronze  (which  last  was  probably  an  orna- 
mental balustrade),  stood  a  lofty  bronze 
column.  Upon  these  pillars  the  em- 
peror's will,  his  expenditures,  and  those 
acts  of  his  reign  which  he  considered  the 
most  important  were  inscribed.  How 
priceless  would  this  record  be  if  we  had 
it !  But  it  perished.  Scarce  a  vestige  of 
tomb,  pillar,  or  inscription  remains  for 
our  instruction.  What  price  would  be 
too  great  for  a  copy  of  those  records  ! 


ANCYRA  201 

Well,  copies  of  them  may  be  found  in 
each  of  the  three  great  libraries  of  Eu- 
rope, but  those  who  placed  them  there 
brought  them  from  Ancyra. 

Augustus  was  the  first  Caesar  whom 
the  Romans  deified.  When  that  new 
cult  was  sprung  upon  the  empire,  the 
people  of  Galatia,  as  was  their  wont, 
adopted  it  with  such  swift  and  hot  en- 
thusiasm as  made  them  recognized 
throughout  Asia,  and  by  the  emperor 
himself  for  its  stanchest  devotees.  As- 
sisted by  contributions  from  other  pro- 
vinces, they  built  a  temple  at  Ancyra 
for  the  worship  of  the  new  divinity,  and 
were  granted,  as  a  distinguishing  mark 
of  imperial  favor,  the  right  to  inscribe 
upon  its  walls  a  copy  of  the  records  on 
the  bronze  pillars  at  Rome.  The  letters 
were  cut  deep  into  the  marble  through 
a  glaze  of  vermilion,  each  letter  plated 
with  beaten  gold.  Though  the  temple 
is  a  ruin,  its  walls  stand.    The  gold  is 


202  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

gone.  The  vermilion  has  faded  or  scaled 
away.  But  the  letters  remain,  a  copy  in 
Latin  with  a  Greek  translation  by  its 
side.  To  the  fickleness  of  Galatians  we 
owe  this  treasure  no  less  than  the  still 
more  precious  Epistle  of  St.  Paul.  There 
is  One  who  can  make  a  weathercock  do 
the  work  of  an  anchor. 

Thus  Ancyra  was  blown  about  by 
every  wind  of  doctrine,  until  under  Con- 
stantine  Christianity  became  the  religion 
of  the  empire.  Then  of  course  she  be- 
came a  stalwart  for  Christ.  But  presently 
came  a  reaction.  Julian,  disgusted  with 
the  quarrels  of  the  church,  educated 
under  conditions  which  forced  his  noble 
nature  to  become  familiar  with  the  ar- 
rogance and  hypocrisy  which  had  per- 
meated the  Christian  profession,  and 
influenced  in  no  small  degree  by  cir- 
cumstances alluded  to  in  my  paper  on 
Ephesus,  headed  a  movement  to  efface 
Christianity  and  restore  the  old  gods.  He 


ANCYRA  203 

had  tried  to  rebuild  Jerusalem  in  order 
to  falsify  the  supposed  predictions  of 
the  Saviour,  but  had  failed  in  the  at- 
tempt. Exploding  fire  damp  and  other 
signs  deemed  supernatural  had  scared 
away  even  those  Jews  whose  zeal  set 
them  digging  into  Mt.  Moriah  with 
silver  spades  and  carrying  rubbish  in 
baskets  of  silver  and  gold,  while  their 
ladies  bore  away  its  dust  in  aprons  of 
silk.  He  failed  to  restore  even  the  walls 
of  the  city  which  he  meant  to  honor  be- 
cause it  had  rejected  Christ.  He  had 
not  yet  met  the  monk  to  whom  he  said, 
"  I  am  going  to  rebuild  in  the  East  the 
temple  of  the  fire-worshipers  ;  where  is 
your  carpenter  now  ? "  nor  heard  the 
reply,  "  He  is  at  the  Euphrates  making 
a  coffin  for  your  Majesty."  Though  the 
defeat  and  ruin  which  forced  him  to  say, 
"  Galilean,  thou  hast  conquered,"  were 
approaching  fast,  for  a  little  moment  he 
seemed  to  be  moving  toward  success. 


204  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

With  the  celerity  acquired  by  long 
practice,  Ancyra  adopted  Julian's  views. 
To  express  his  appreciation  of  her  nim- 
bleness,  before  starting  on  the  eastern 
campaign  which  cost  him  his  life,  he  hon- 
ored her  with  an  imperial  visit.  To  com- 
memorate his  coming  her  people  raised 
a  bronze  pillar  which  remains  to  this  day. 
Fragments  of  their  citadel  upon  which 
they  inscribed  their  indorsement  of  his 
apostasy  are  also  preserved,  and  the  in- 
scription is  legible. 

It  would  be  unfair  to  omit  mention  of 
what,  as  far  as  I  know,  is  the  only  speci- 
men of  steadfastness  ever  exhibited  in 
Ancyra,  and  equally  unfair  to  cover  with 
silence  the  only  act  of  cruelty  attributed 
to  Julian,  though  it  has  been  attributed 
to  him  on  insufficient  evidence. 

In  ;^62  A.  D.,  when  the  emperor  vis- 
ited Ancyra,  there  was  in  that  place  a 
presbyter  conspicuous  for  the  energy 
of  his  rebukes   to  apostate  Christians. 


ANCYRA  205 

Day  after  day  he  tramped  the  streets 
reechoing  PauFs  cry  in  trumpet  tones:  — 

"  O  foolish  Galatians,  who  hath  be- 
witched you,  that  ye  should  not  obey 
the  truth? "  "  Who  hath  bewitched  you? " 
"Who  hath  bewitched  you?  " 

The  man  was  arrested  and  brought 
before  the  emperor.  Brave  as  Paul,  but 
without  Paul's  kindness  or  a  trace  of  his 
tact,  he  broke  forth  with  a  fury  of  in- 
vective, arraigning  the  monarch  for  his 
apostasy  and  threatening  speedy  ven- 
geance from  the  Almighty  upon  him. 

It  is  a  fact  that  Basil  was  carried  from 
the  imperial  presence  and  pulled  to 
pieces  with  red-hot  pincers,  but  there  is 
no  proof  that  he  died  by  the  emperor's 
order,  or  even  that  the  emperor  knew  of 
his  fate  until  the  devilish  deed  had  been 
done.  There  is  also  no  evidence  that 
the  steadfast  man  was  a  Galatian. 

When  Julian's  death  had  ended  his 
crusade  against  the   Cross,   and  Chris- 


2o6  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

tianity  resumed  her  sceptre  over  the 
state,  the  conduct  of  Ancyra  justified 
her  reputation.  She  hastened  back  into 
the  fold. 

The  fifteenth  century  found  her  the 
residence  of  Bajazet  and  probably  the 
stanchest  fortress  in  his  dominions. 
Here  was  the  stronghold  of  the  armies 
which  terrorized  Europe  and  kept  Con- 
stantinople for  years  in  a  state  of  virtual 
siege,  or  rather  of  vassalage,  since  she 
purchased  her  nominal  independence  by 
large  and  frequent  bribes.  On  the  plain 
before  the  city  was  fought,  1402  a.  d., 
the  battle  in  which  Tamerlane  annihi- 
lated the  power  of  Bajazet.  Whether  the 
conqueror  imprisoned  his  vanquished 
rival  in  an  iron  cage  and  exhibited  him 
as  a  sign  of  his  triumph,  as  was  for- 
merly believed,  is  uncertain. 

Tamerlane  and  Bajazet  are  gone,  but 
Ancyra  stands.  The  temple  she  reared 
to  Augustus,  then  dedicated  to  Christ, 


ANCYRA  207 

and  at  last  converted  into  a  mosque  for 
Allah,  the  pillar  she  raised  to  Julian 
and  the  inscription  on  the  fragments  of 
her  ruined  citadel,  and,  more  than  these, 
the  Epistle  of  Paul  to  her  people,  tell 
us  how  easily,  how  swiftly,  and  how  often 
she  turned  to  each  shifting  wind. 

If  you  ask  "What  is  her  religion 
now?"  the  answer  is  that  apparently 
tired  of  change,  she  seems  at  last  to  have 
hit  upon  a  new  device  to  satisfy  her 
vacillating  inclinations,  and  at  present 
attempts  to  be  all  things  at  once.  For 
here  the  Armenians  have  a  large  convent 
where  the  archbishop  and  his  suffragans 
reside.  Here  the  Roman  Catholics  main- 
tain four  churches,  the  Jews  have  their 
synagogues,  and  the  Mussulmans  their 
mosques.  And  here  any  one  who  dis- 
covers an  improved  substitute  for  Chris- 
tianity may  hope  to  find  it  easier  than 
in  most  places  to  draw  proselytes  into 
his  camp. 


IX 
TYANA 

THE   PAGAN   BETHLEHEM 

Some  eighty  miles  a  trifle  west  of  north 
from  Tarsus,  and  separated  from  that 
metropolis  by  a  wall  of  mountains,  stood 
Tyana.  A  small  city,  neither  rich  nor 
strong  nor  beautiful,  it  was  before  the 
Christian  era  in  no  way  distinguished. 
The  highway  to  the  Orient  passed  its 
walls,  but  commerce  never  paused  to 
make  it  an  important  market.  No  school 
of  art  or  science  gave  it  the  dignity  which 
exalted  Tarsus  and  Alexandria.  It  con- 
tained no  buildings  or  statues  which  could 
win  admiration  from  travelers  familiar 
with  the  temples  of  Smyrna  or  the  sculp- 
tures of  Pergamos.  No  springs  exhaled 
intoxicating  vapors  to  shroud  it  in  the 
awe  that  hallowed  Hierapolis.  No  myth- 


TYANA  209 

ical  traditions  clothed  it  in  the  sacred 
livery  of  Ephesus  and  Eleusis.  No 
monarch  of  renown  like  the  founder  of 
Antioch  had  emptied  his  treasury  by  en- 
duing it  with  splendors  to  perpetuate  his 
memory.  Yet  for  more  than  two  cen- 
turies this  insignificant  city  enjoyed  a 
celebrity  wider  probably  than  Bethlehem 
had  gained  before  the  birth  of  Constan- 
tine  or  Mecca  before  that  of  Amrou.  A 
single  event  was  the  cradle  of  its  fame. 

About  the  time  when  Joseph  went  up 
to  be  enrolled  with  Mary,  his  espoused 
wife,  —  for  aught  we  know  on  the  night 
when  the  angels  sang  to  the  shepherds, 
—  Tyana  gave  birth  to  a  marvelous  man, 
a  man  for  whose  worship  many  temples 
were  erected  before  a  single  building  had 
been  raised  in  any  part  of  the  world  for 
the  worship  of  Christ.  The  man's  name 
was  Apollonius,  and  the  place  of  his 
birth  became  his  surname,  so  that  he 
was  called  "  Apollonius  of  Tyana,"  as 


210  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

the  Saviour  from  the  home  of  his  child- 
hood was  known  as  "Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth." 

This  man  is  the  unsolved  puzzle  of 
historians.  All  concede  that  his  fasci- 
nating and  mysterious  personality  filled 
an  immense  space  in  the  early  centuries, 
and  that  his  influence  was  incalculably 
great ;  but  in  their  judgment  of  his  char- 
acter and  the  source  of  his  influence  I 
have  found  no  two  writers  in  complete 
agreement,  and  few  who  do  not  appear 
to  doubt  their  own  conclusions.  Between 
the  worshipers  of  Apollonius,  or  rather 
between  the  worshipers  of  the  mysterious 
being  who  passed  for  Apollonius  and  the 
worshipers  of  Christ,  the  subtlest  and 
most  significant  spiritual  conflict  of  the 
first  three  centuries  was  waged.  In  it 
the  pagan  prophet  appeared  for  a  time 
to  have  won  the  victory,  though  in  fact 
he  had  only  prepared  the  way  before  the 
face  of  our  Saviour. 


TYANA  211 

To  describe  that  conflict  is  the  pur- 
pose of  this  paper. 

The  reports  of  Apollonius  which  have 
reached  us  fall  into  three  groups, — 
facts,  probabilities,  and  fictions.  The 
facts  are  few,  the  probabilities  are  im- 
portant, the  fictions,  though  incredible, 
are  significant,  because  they  harmonize 
completely  with  the  facts  and  the  proba- 
bilities. 

I.  We  know  how  the  man  looked. 
His  undoubted  portrait  preserved  on 
coin  or  medal  is  familiar  to  scholars. 
The  august  face  is  bearded  and  crowned 
with  laurel  as  Christ  was  crowned  with 
thorns.  The  features  are  Greek  and  sug- 
gest "the  front  of  Jove  himself."  But 
for  the  winning  sweetness  and  gentleness 
in  the  curves  of  the  lips  the  face  might 
pass  for  the  original  of  Neri's  Jupiter 
Tonans. 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  coun- 
tenance of  this  inscrutable  enigma  should 


212  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

have  been  so  carefully  preserved  and  so 
generally  forgotten  while  no  line  of  sculp- 
ture or  drawing  exists  that  gives  the  faint- 
est hint  of  the  appearance  of  Him  who 
in  so  many  million  homes  is  loved  as  an 
elder  brother. 

We  know  that  ApoUonius  was  en- 
rolled among  the  gods  ;  that  temples  in 
various  places  were  built  for  his  worship, 
and  that  for  a  long  though  indefinite 
period  he  was  the  object  of  devout 
adoration.  Early  in  the  third  century 
Caracalla  visited  Tyana,  built  and  conse- 
crated a  temple  to  him  there,  granted 
the  right  of  Roman  citizenship  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  place,  and  constituted 
it  a  "  sacred  city."  Not  many  years  later 
Alexander  Severus  put  the  statue  of 
ApoUonius  in  his  private  oratory.  The 
implacable  Aurelian,  though  exasperated 
by  the  obstinacy  with  which  Tyana  had 
opposed  his  arms,  when,  after  a  sternly 
resisted  siege,  he  captured  it,  treated  the 


TYANA  213 

inhabitants  with  distinguished  honor  and 
shed  no  blood  except  that  of  the  traitor 
who  betrayed  the  city  into  his  hands. 
There  is  no  plausible  explanation  of  a 
clemency  unparalleled  elsewhere  in  the 
career  of  that  cruel  conqueror,  except 
the  explanation  made  by  himself,  that  he 
obeyed  the  command  given  him  in  a 
vision  by  Apollonius. 

It  is  certain  that  at  the  request  of  the 
Empress  Domna,  the  mother  of  Cara- 
calla,  Philostratos  wrote  a  book  which 
some  call  a  religious  novel  with  Apol- 
lonius for  its  hero,  which  others  call  his 
"  Memorabilia,"  but  which  his  disci- 
ples regarded  as  "  the  Gospel  of  Apollo- 
nius," precisely  as  we  name  the  writings 
of  the  evangelists  the  "  Gospels "  or 
"  Good  News  "  of  Christ.  The  impossi- 
bility of  distmguishing  sharply  the  facts 
from  the  fictions  in  this  book  has  veiled 
in  impenetrable  mist  the  personality  of 
its  hero. 


214  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

11.  The  probabilities.  The  evidence 
in  hand  leaves  no  reasonable  doubt  that 
Apollonius  was  not  only  a  man  of  com- 
manding genius,  but  that  he  was  also  a 
character  entitled,  by  purity  of  purpose 
and  unselfish  desire  to  bless  his  fellow- 
men  both  by  deeds  of  beneficence  and 
by  giving  them  truer  conceptions  of 
deity  and  duty,  to  be  classed  with  Soc- 
rates and  almost  with  St.  Paul.  Though 
this  seems  to  me  certain,  I  put  it  among 
the  probabilities  because  one  or  two 
writers  of  repute  count  him  only  the  best 
among  that  herd  of  self-seeking  thauma- 
turgists  who  thronged  the  first  centu- 
ries. 

A  collection  of  his  letters  said  to  have 
been  made  by  Hadrian  still  exists,  but 
critics  are  at  odds  about  them.  Whether 
all  of  them,  or  some  of  them,  or  none  of 
them  are  genuine  cannot  be  determined. 
It  seems  certain  that  he  was  personally 
known  to  Vespasian  and  Titus,  the  two 


TYANA  215 

most  excellent  emperors  between  Au- 
gustus and  Trajan,  and  it  is  probable  that 
he  exerted  an  appreciable  influence  upon 
their  policies.  It  seems  indubitable  that, 
probably  without  knowing  whence  the 
influence  came,  he  was  himself  powerfully- 
influenced  by  the  teachings  of  Christ. 
He  was  educated  first  at  Tarsus  and 
afterward  at  i^gae,  very  near  that  place. 
It  is  therefore  not  incredible  that  he  met 
Paul,  perhaps  saw  him  frequently,  for 
the  two  boys,  though  one  was  a  Jew  and 
the  other  a  Gentile,  were  both  aristocrats, 
each  of  them  hungered  after  righteous- 
ness, and  each  of  them  had  that  gift  of 
keen  observation  which  nothing  worth 
noting  in  mice  or  men  escapes. 

III.  The  improbabilities.  These, 
though  incredible  to  us,  were  believed  by 
his  disciples  as  sincerely  as  the  majority 
of  Christians  to-day  credit  the  miracles 
of  Christ.  I  cull  a  few  of  them  from  that 
fascinating  book  which  may  be  named 


2i6  CITIES    OF    PAUL 

"  The  Gospel  of  Apollonius  according 
to  Philostratos/' 

It  would  be  superfluous  to  point  out 
the  resemblances  they  bear  to  the  facts 
in  our  Saviour's  life. 

Apollonius  had  no  mortal  father,  but 
was  born  to  an  invisible  deity.  Swans 
sang  over  his  cradle  songs  which  pro- 
claimed the  advent  of  a  Saviour.  When 
a  child  he  was  taken  by  his  parents  to 
Tarsus,  where  the  learned  doctors  wel- 
comed him.  Repelled  by  the  wickedness 
of  that  splendid  city,  he  begged  and  ob- 
tained permission  from  his  parents  to 
retire  into  the  quiet  village  of  JEgsc. 
Here  he  grew  up  in  obscurity,  finding 
favor  with  God  and  man.  The  rest  of 
his  life  he  spent  going  about  doing  good, 
teaching,  healing,  comforting  those  that 
mourned.  Though  the  heart  of  his  in- 
struction was  that  men  should  love  their 
neighbors  as  themselves  and  practice  self- 
denial  for  the  benefit  of  their  fellows,  he 


TYANA  217 

seems  to  have  escaped  all  taint  of  that 
vicious  notion  which  had  infected  the 
whole  pagan  world,  and  was  beginning  to 
distemper  Christianity  with  the  belief 
that  it  is  meritorious  to  do  disagreeable 
things  merely  because  one  hates  to.  He 
would  go  through  fire  to  rescue  the 
burning,  but  he  would  not  walk  on  nails 
for  no  other  reason  than  that  they  hurt. 
On  one  occasion  at  Ephesus  a  flock 
of  sparrows  lighted  on  a  tree  near  the 
place  where  he  was  preaching.  Presently 
another  sparrow  flew  to  them,  uttering  a 
peculiar  cry,  whereupon  they  all  darted 
oflF  together.  "  Watch  the  sparrows,"  he 
exclaimed,  "  and  learn  from  them.  That 
little  bird  has  found  some  grain,  and  in- 
stead of  trying  to  eat  it  all  himself  has 
called  his  fellows  to  share  his  wealth.  If 
you  did  the  same  you  would  be  called 
spendthrifts."  With  that  he  ended  his 
sermon  and  sent  his  hearers  to  "  consider 
the  sparrows."    They  found  the   birds 


2i8  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

feasting  upon  wheat  which  a  boy  in  the 
street  had  spilled  from  his  basket. 

At  Rome  he  met  a  procession  bearing 
to  the  grave  the  body  of  a  nobleman's 
young  daughter.  He  bade  the  bearers 
set  down  the  bier,  touched  the  corpse, 
and  spoke  a  few  words  in  a  low  voice. 
Immediately  the  maid  opened  her  eyes, 
arose,  and  returned  to  her  father's  house, 
"  as  Alcestis  did  of  old  when  recalled  to 
life  by  Hercules."  Her  relatives  gave 
him  a  thank  offering  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  drachmas,  which  he  settled 
upon  the  damsel  for  a  marriage  portion. 

The  manner  of  his  departure  from  this 
world  is  variously  reported,  but  all  ac- 
counts agree  that  it  was  not  by  death. 
After  his  translation  a  young  man  who 
did  not  believe  in  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  and  was  preaching  a  crusade  against 
those  who  did,  visited  Tyana.  There 
Apollonius  appeared  to  him,  convinced 
him  of  his  error,  told  him  many  things 


TYANA  219 

of  the  life  to  come,  and  sent  him  forth 
an  eloquent  advocate  of  the  doctrine  he 
had  before  denounced. 

Most  of  the  teachings  attributed  by 
Philostratos  to  Apollonius  savor  of  the 
New  Testament.  But  to  the  New  Tes- 
tament they 

"  Are  as  moonlight  unto  sunlight,  and  as  water  unto 
wine.** 

Which  of  them  were  uttered  by  the  sage, 
and  which  were  coined  by  his  biographer, 
it  is  not  possible  to  say.  Those,  however, 
whom  Dr.  Bushnell  has  failed  to  con- 
vince that  the  character  portrayed  in  the 
gospels  is  beyond  the  power  of  the  hu- 
man imagination  to  invent,  will  probably 
find  their  doubts  dissolved  by  a  compari- 
son of  Philostratos  with  Matthew,  Mark, 
or  Luke.  Philostratos  possessed  super- 
lative culture,  high  moral  sensibility,  and 
great  literary  skill.  He  had  to  help  him  a 
very  considerable  familiarity  with  the  say- 
ings of  Christ.    Yet  in  trying  to  present 


220  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

a  perfect  character  he  has  painted  an  ideal 
which  before  Jesus  of  Nazareth  flickers 
as  a  thieved  and  gutted  candle  brought 
into  sunlight. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  Apollo- 
nius  trained  disciples  or  attempted  to 
found  a  new  school  of  either  philosophy 
or  religion.  He  seems  to  have  "  gone 
about  doing  good/*  trying  to  learn  and 
to  teach  the  truth  without  thinking  of 
his  reputation  or  taking  consciously  any 
measures  to  perpetuate  his  influence. 
After  his  death,  however,  his  fame  grew 
steadily.  Early  in  the  third  century,  when 
he  had  long  been  worshiped,  his  influ- 
ence was  immensely  increased  by  the  act 
of  a  broken-hearted  woman.  This  is  the 
story :  — 

There  lived  at  Emesa  two  sisters. 
They  were  Syrian  peasants.  Their 
names  were  Domna  and  Maesa.  They 
worshiped  the  sun,  and  both  of  them 
seem  to   have   been    attached   in  some 


TYANA  221 

capacity  to  the  famous  temple  of  that 
divinity  in  their  city.  Domna  had  gained 
celebrity  for  skill  in  astrology.  A  certain 
widowed  Roman  general,  a  firm  believer 
in  that  pseudo-science,  hearing  that  her 
horoscope  had  marked  her  as  the  wife 
of  an  emperor,  sought  out  and  married 
her. 

This  general,  the  most  gifted  captain 
of  his  age,  cold,  crafty,  cruel,  not  like 
Caligula  with  the  cruelty  of  fitful  passion, 
but  like  Napoleon  with  the  cruelty  of 
deliberate  policy,  unscrupulous,  super- 
stitious, and  insatiably  ambitious,  became 
in  193  A.  D.  by  usurpation  the  Emperor 
Septimius  Severus.  No  small  part  of  his 
eminent  achievements  were  due  to  his 
wife,  Domna,  the  peasant  girl.  She  was 
a  woman  of  rare  genius,  strong  will,  and 
ambition,  almost  equal  to  her  husband's. 
But  she  possessed  what  he  lacked,  a 
heart.  Her  character  was  not  good.  In 
our  day  it  would  seem  extremely  bad. 


222  CITIES   OF    PAUL 

But  for  a  Roman  empress  in  her  time  it 
served  well  enough,  and  could  not  well 
be  criticised  by  society  which  had  ac- 
cepted Caligula  as  god  and  Faustina  as 
madonna.  For  a  time  husband  and  wife 
lived  in  close  amity,  each  leaning  upon 
the  talents  of  the  other.  They  had  two 
sons,  CaracallaandGeta.  But  time,  which 
generally  brings  trouble  to  families  where 
selfishness  usurps  the  place  of  affection, 
had  to  be  reckoned  with.  A  favorite  of 
the  emperor,  named  Plautianus,  jealous 
of  Domna's  influence,  filled  her  hus- 
band*s  ears  with  slanders  of  his  wife ; 
made  him  believe  that  she  had  planned 
to  poison  him.  Her  two  sons,  both  cov- 
eting the  crown,  hated  each  other  with 
a  deadly  hatred.  She  tried  with  all  her 
power  to  reconcile  them,  but  her  efforts 
only  made  it  more  evident  that  each  of 
them  was  determined  to  assassinate  his 
brother.  Their  father,  compelled  to  leave 
Rome  for  Britain,  took  both  sons  with 


TYANA  223 

him  because  he  dared  not  leave  them 
behind.  He  died  at  York,  probably 
poisoned  by  the  elder  of  the  two.  They 
brought  the  ashes  of  their  parent  home. 
On  the  way  neither  dared  to  eat  a  mor- 
sel or  drink  a  drop  from  the  other's 
hand  that  had  not  been  tested  and  proved 
free  of  poison.  At  Rome  mother  and 
sons,  each  of  the  latter  protected  by 
an  armed  guard  from  the  dagger  of  his 
brother,  celebrated  the  apotheosis  of 
husband  and  father.  When  the  obse- 
quies were  over  the  widow  called  into 
the  closet  of  her  grief  the  two  boys  who 
were  to  share  the  throne  between  them, 
and  said :  — 

"  You  find  means,  my  sons,  to  divide 
the  earth  and  the  seas  between  you,  and 
the  streams  between  them,  you  say,  di- 
vide the  two  continents.  But  how  will 
you  be  able  to  divide  your  mother  ?  How 
am  I,  your  unhappy  parent,  to  be  torn 
asunder  and  shared  between  you  both  ? 


224  CITIES    OF    PAUL 

There  is  but  one  way.  First,  sheathe 
your  swords  in  my  breast  and  then  let 
my  body  be  cut  in  two,  that  each  prince 
may  bury  half  his  mother  in  his  own 
territory.  So  shall  I  be  equally  parted 
between  you  together  with  your  empire 
of  earth  and  sea." 

Though  Domna  may  not  have  ex- 
pressed her  anguish  in  precisely  these 
words  which  Herodian  attributes  to  her, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  they  give  a  true 
conception  of  her  despair;  for  Herodian 
was  a  contemporary,  an  honest  reporter, 
and  knew  whereof  he  affirmed. 

The  mother's  pleadings  were  futile. 
Caracalla,  hiding  Macbeth's  treachery 
beneath  Iago*s  hypocrisy,  persuaded  her 
to  invite  his  younger  brother  to  meet  him 
in  her  private  chamber  for  a  friendly  con- 
ference. There  he  had  concealed  assas- 
sins who  stabbed  Geta  in  her  arms  while 
she  vainly  strove  to  make  her  body  a 
shield  against  their  daggers. 


TYANA  225 

Nor  was  this  the  bitterest  drop  in  her 
cup.  After  the  cruel  deed  had  been  done, 
because  the  anguish  in  her  face  inspired 
the  sympathy  of  courtiers,  the  fratri- 
cide, by  threats  that  if  she  refused  to 
obey  him  he  would  slay  her  with  the 
same  weapon  that  had  pierced  the  heart 
of  her  son,  compelled  her  to  put  on  gay 
garments,  to  dance,  and  to  sing. 

"When  it  is  dark  enough  the  stars 
come  out."  It  is  not  strange  that  in  the 
horror  of  this  great  darkness  the  tortured 
woman  gazed  eagerly  upon  the  only  star 
that  shone  in  her  sky.  We  are  told  that 
she  sought  consolation  in  philosophy ; 
that  she  spent  whole  days  with  its  pro- 
fessors. 

For  nearly  two  centuries  the  words  of 
Him  who  came  into  the  world  to  "heal 
the  brokenhearted  "  had  been  slowly  but 
surely  penetrating  to  wider  and  yet  wider 
horizons.  Christianity  was  still  the  reli- 
gion of  the  poor  and  the  lowly,  but  the 


226  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

teachings  of  Christ  had  permeated  the  air. 
They  had  been  whispered  in  kitchens, 
shouted  from  the  stakes  of  martyrs, 
scoffed  at  in  palaces,  murmured  in  hov- 
els. Executioners  had  marveled  to  see 
them  give  rest  to  the  tortured  and  cour- 
age to  cowards.  Slaves  had  seen  them 
transform  ferocious  masters  into  sympa- 
thetic friends,  and  masters  had  seen  them 
change  truculent  slaves  into  obedient  ser- 
vants. Pagan  philosophers  had  vainly 
endeavored  to  explain  how  a  superstition 
which  seemed  to  them  absurd  could  plant 
and  foster  honesty  in  thieves,  kindness 
in  professional  assassins,  generosity  in 
misers,  and  valor  in  poltroons.  But 
the  facts  were  obvious  and  indubitable. 
Trajan,  who  had  striven  more  zealously 
than  any  other  Caesar  for  the  strict  en- 
forcement of  established  law,  had  recog- 
nized them  and  wrenched  the  law  till  it 
cracked  to  conform  to  them.  He  had 
ordered  Pliny   to  shut   his   eyes  when 


TYANA  227 

Christians  refused  to  pour  libations,  and 
to  disregard  accusations  unconfirmed  by 
their  own  confessions. 

Thus  the  words  of  Christ  penetrated 
all  atmospheres.  Domna  had  heard,  but 
thought  little  of  them  in  the  days  of  her 
pride  when  her  heart  was  whole.  But 
when  her  heart  was  broken  they  came 
to  her  with  power,  though  she  knew 
not  whence  they  came.  Many  of  them 
were  credited  to  Apollonius.  His  was 
a  household  name  among  the  rich  and 
the  mighty,  as  was  the  name  of  Christ 
among  the  poor  and  the  needy.  Some 
of  Christ's  teachings  Apollonius  had  re- 
peated, others  he  was  believed  to  have 
originated.  To  Domna  Christ  was  at 
best  an  obscure  foreigner  who  had  lived 
in  the  slums  and  been  ignominiously  gib- 
beted. Apollonius  was  a  distinct  and  dei- 
fied personality,  admired  by  philosophers 
and  worshiped  by  aristocrats.  Hungry 
for  help,  she  commissioned  Philostratos 


228  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

to  collect  all  that  could  be  learned  of 
him.  Thus  the  famous  book  came  to 
be  written,  and  a  poor  parody  of  our 
Saviour's  life  became  the  gospel  of  the 
Roman  court.  But  the  diluted  gospel  and 
the  tinseled  Christ  were  insufficient.  For 
a  time  they  did  some  service.  It  was 
doubtless  Domna's  influence  that  sent 
her  dastard  son  to  Tyana  and  constrained 
him  to  build  a  temple  and  consecrate  the 
city  to  the  sham  saviour,  for  in  spite  of 
his  atrocity  Caracalla  appears  to  have 
given  his  mother  all  the  affection  it  was 
in  the  power  of  his  fiendish  nature  to 
bestow.  But  the  sham  saviour  could  not 
give  the  despairing  woman  the  blessed- 
ness of  them  that  mourn,  for  she  died  a 
suicide.  Yet  she  lived  until,  through  her 
influence,  the  worship  of  Apollonius  had 
received  a  strong  impulse  and  been  put 
upon  the  way  toward  becoming  the  im- 
perial religion.  That  road  was  closed  to 
it  and  opened  to  Christianity  by  the  in- 


TYANA  229 

fluence  of  another  and  a  very  different 
woman,  whose  story  runs  parallel  to 
hers. 

Domna's  sister  Maesa  had  two  daugh- 
ters, cousins  therefore  of  Caracalla  and 
Geta.  Their  names  were  Soemis  and  Ma- 
maea.  Each  of  them  bore  a  son  and  each 
of  the  sons  became  an  emperor.  The  son 
of  Soemis  was  surpassingly  beautiful. 
While  still  a  boy  he  was  made  a  priest 
of  the  Sun.  His  splendid  appearance 
fascinated  the  soldiers,  and  by  the  machi- 
nations of  his  mother  he  was  placed  upon 
the  throne  of  the  Caesars.  There  he  dis- 
graced humanity  by  an  ostentatious  de- 
pravity which  exceeded  the  obscenities  of 
Nero,  and  had  no  trace  of  those  artistic 
qualities  which  make  it  possible  to  be- 
lieve that  even  Nero  was  once  a  man. 
In  less  than  four  years  this  son,  the  Em- 
peror Heliogabalus,  with  his  mother, 
perished  at  the  hands  of  an  exasperated 
soldiery  and  an  outraged  people,  who 


230  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

murdered  them  and  threw  their  bodies 
into  the  Tiber. 

The  son  of  Mamaea  met  a  different 
fate.  His  mother  had  in  some  way  been 
drawn  to  Christianity.  Perhaps  it  was 
only  that  she  clung  to  the  best  there 
was  in  the  religion  fostered  by  her  aunt 
Domna,  and  was  by  that  led  toward 
the  light.  However  that  may  be,  she 
adopted  the  principles  of  Christ  and 
trained  her  son  to  obey  them. 

Now  there  was  at  Alexandria  one  of 
the  wisest,  devoutest,  and  most  per- 
suasive Christians  who  have  ever  lived. 
In  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures  no  one 
equaled  him,  in  classical  learning  no  one 
excelled  him,  in  powers  of  persuasion 
no  one  approached  him.  His  name  was 
Origen.  Before  her  son's  character  was 
fully  formed,  and  probably  to  confirm 
convictions  which  had  already  nearly, 
if  not  wholly,  mastered  her,  she  sent  for 
this  man.    He  spent  a  considerable  time 


^ 


TYANA  231 

with  her.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  all 
his  matchless  abilities  were  strained  to 
lead  her  into  a  deeper  devotion  to  Christ. 
Her  conduct  shows  that  he  succeeded. 
Her  conceptions  of  life  and  its  duties 
were  antipodal  to  those  of  her  mother 
and  her  sister.  In  place  of  the  diabolical 
ambition  which  ruined  the  other  mem- 
bers of  her  family,  there  appeared  in  her 
a  genuine  patriotism.  Before  her  son 
was  fifteen  the  army  forced  Elagabalus, 
who  had  just  failed  in  an  attempt  to 
murder  him,  to  appoint  him  successor 
to  the  throne.  Mamaea  guarded  her  boy 
with  wise  and  tender  care.  She  sur- 
rounded him  with  the  best  and  ablest 
men  in  Rome.  Without  taking  him 
out  of  the  world,  her  resolute  will  and 
motherly  tact  kept  him  from  the  evil 
and  prepared  him  for  the  high  place 
to  which  Providence  had  called  him. 

When  he  became  emperor  under  the 
name  of  Alexander  Severus,  the  court 


232  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

was  immediately  reformed.  A  change 
more  instantaneous  than  that  which, 
when  William  took  the  helm  that  James 
had  fled  from,  swept  Jeffreys  from  the 
chancellorship  and  drove  Claverhouse 
into  exile,  renovated  Rome.  The  great 
jurists  whom  Elagabalus  had  dismissed 
that  he  might  fill  their  places  with  men 
selected  from  the  gutters,  the  race-course, 
and  the  arena,  for  no  other  reason  than 
their  bull  necks  and  brawny  breasts  and 
bestial  proclivities,  were  recalled  to  of- 
fice. Papinian,  the  greatest  jurist  Rome 
ever  produced,  had  been  murdered  by 
Caracalla  because  when  commanded  to 
palliate  before  the  Senate  Geta's  assas- 
sination he  replied  that  it  was  easier  to 
commit  fratricide  than  to  justify  it ;  but 
Ulpian  and  Paulus  still  lived  and  gave 
lustre  to  the  new  administration. 

Severus  sought  counsel  from  the  best 
men  in  the  empire,  and  was  swayed  by 
their  advice,  but  to  the  close  of  his  life 


TYANA  ^233 

his  mother  was  his  chief  and  most  trusted 
guide.  Abuses  were  corrected,  morals 
were  purified.  Nine  years  of  peaceful 
prosperity  followed  his  accession,  during 
all  of  which  the  example  of  a  family 
Christian  in  all  but  name  was  given  to 
the  Roman  world  by  the  relations  be- 
tween the  emperor  and  his  mother ;  and 
though  the  last  five  of  the  fourteen  years 
of  his  beneficent  reign  were  agitated  by 
wars  which  the  wickedness  of  former 
rulers  had  made  inevitable,  they  were 
wars  which  proved  that  the  influence 
which  made  him  just  and  gentle  in  peace 
had  also  made  him  brave  and  generous 
in  war. 

This  upright  man,  devoted  son,  and 
beneficent  sovereign  placed  in  his  pri- 
vate oratory  four  statues.  They  repre- 
sented Orpheus,  Abraham,  Apollonius, 
and  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  To  our  minds 
this  may  seem  an  inexplicable  combina- 
tion.    What   relation    has   Orpheus  to 


234  CITIES    OF   PAUL 

Abraham  or  Apollonius  to  Christ  ?  we 
naturally  ask.  But  had  we  lived  in  Rome 
at  the  court  of  Alexander,  the  group- 
ing would  have  seemed  to  us  appropri- 
ate, and  would  have  told  us  a  plain  and 
most  impressive  fact. 

Orpheus  had  long  been  accepted  by 
Pythagoreans  as  the  one  whose  resur- 
rection proved  immortality ;  whose  lyre 
showed  that  persuasion  is  more  powerful 
than  force ;  whose  rescue  of  Eurydice 
proclaimed  the  victory  of  self-sacrificing 
love  over  all  things,  even  over  death. 
The  members  of  the  Orphic  societies, 
though  few  in  number,  were  the  salt  of 
the  heathen  world.  Their  white  gar- 
ments were  a  protest  against  the  scarlet 
splendors  of  pagan  debauchery.  Their 
ascetic  rules,  which  forbade  the  use  of 
animal  food,  and  cultivated  plain  living 
and  high  thinking,  were  a  perpetual  re- 
buke to  the  purple  and  fine  linen  of 
those  who  fared  sumptuously  every  day 


TYANA  235 

and  did  nothing  else.  They  had  done 
much  to  prepare  the  way  before  Apol- 
lonius,  who  had  himself  been  a  Pytha- 
gorean or  was  believed  to  have  been  one. 
As  Christ  was  the  ultimate  fruit  of  all 
the  good  which  had  grown  for  centuries 
in  Judaea,  ApoUonius  was  the  consum- 
mation of  the  best  that  Greece  and  Rome 
had  been  able  to  produce.  As  Orpheus 
passed  for  the  spiritual  ancestor  of  Apol- 
lonius,  Abraham  bore  a  similar  relation 
to  Christ.  Such  was  the  reasoning.  The 
idea  of  the  unity  of  God  had  not  yet 
mastered  the  Gentile  mind.  That  there 
should  be  two  divinities  with  equal  claims 
to  worship  would  not  seem  strange  to 
Romans. 

The  strongest  trait  in  Alexander's  char- 
acter was  family  affection.  It  had  kept 
him  loyal  to  Elagabalus  in  spite  of  that 
monster's  unspeakable  infamy,  in  spite 
of  the  monster's  attempt  to  murder  him. 
At  a  time  when  no  one  could  oppose  the 


236  CITIES   OF   PAUL 

will  of  the  army  without  risking  his  life, 
it  had  kept  him  from  yielding  a  hair*s 
breadth  to  the  clamors  of  an  infuriated 
soldiery  bent  on  forcing  him  to  usurp  his 
cousin's  throne.  For  many  years  the 
strong  will  of  his  great-aunt  Domna  had 
been  the  controlling  influence  in  his  fam- 
ily. What  then  could  be  more  natural 
than  that  reverence  for  her  should  lead 
him  to  place  the  statue  of  the  god  she 
had  taught  him  to  revere  beside  the  im- 
age of  the  God  his  mother  had  taught 
him  to  worship  ? 

However  this  may  be,  in  his  oratory 
Christianity  was  for  the  first  time  raised 
before  the  whole  Roman  Empire  to  an 
equality  with  the  loftiest  cult  of  pagan- 
ism. It  might  still  be  hated,  it  might  still 
be  fought, — and  so  it  was  at  intervals 
for  a  hundred  years, — but  it  could  never 
again  be,  as  it  had  been,  despised.  In  a 
century  almost  to  the  year  from  the  day 
on  which  Alexander  put  the  statue  of 


TYANA  237 

Jesus  beside  that  of  Apollonius,  Con- 
stantine  placed  the  Cross  above  the 
eagles  and  made  Christianity  legally  the 
religion  of  the  empire. 

Gradually  the  gospel  according  to 
Philostratos,  the  splendid  rhetorician, 
faded  from  human  memory,  and  the 
gospels  according  to  the  despised  publi- 
can, the  obscure  disciple,  the  faithful 
physician,  and  the  humble  fisherman 
whom  Jesus  loved  became  the  Bible  of 
our  race.  For  this  we  are  indebted  to  the 
afflictions  of  Domna  and  the  influence 
of  Mamaea  more  than  to  the  battle  of  the 
Milvian;  to  the  unrecorded  words  of 
Origen  whispered  in  the  closet  more 
than  to  the  obtrusive  sword  of  Constan- 
tine,  and  the  in  hoc  signo  trumpeted  at 
the  street  corners  of  the  world. 


EUctrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &*  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.  A. 


Date  Due 

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iJUN  3 

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PRINTED 

IN  U.  S.  A. 

